What are Kinds?
By Mark Farquharson
Some would say that the kinds mention in the bible are the same as the species we have today. However this is not correct, kinds are different to species. Kinds usually contain a number of species. The kinds of land animals and birds were named by Adam. The species we have today have been name by other people. God created kinds, we don’t know what the kinds were but we can work some out.
A Kind is a biological distinct species which can adapt to a wide variety of environments, but no kind can evolve into another kind. Animals with in a kind can mate with one another and produce offspring, but animals from different kinds can not mate.
Why is it important to understand about kinds?
We know that God flood the whole world in Noah’s day. We know this because it destroyed all flesh, that is all people and all the animals on the land. This tells us that all the kinds that Adam name were on the ark, they had to fit on the ark. This indicates that there were not that many kinds as we have species today. Land animals and birds have at least two ancestors that were on the ark. Over time as the animals move from the ark they adapted to the environments that they came across. However they stayed the same kind, cats stayed cats, dogs stayed dogs etc.
But how do we know that animals can adapt to an environment, but still be the same kind?
Lets use dogs as an example, due to breeding by humans we have all the domestic breeds we have today. In fact wolves, coyotes, dingoes and domestic dogs can all easily breed with one another. This is the Dog kind, no matter how the dogs mate, you end up with dogs. This shows that there was one kind of dog created by God in the beginning. This shows that breeding can cause a wide variety of animals of all the same kind. This show that animals do have a built in variability, that allows them to change. If this was not the case, we would not have all the breeds we have today.
Pests becomes resistant to pesticides. This shows the pest can adapt to changes in it’s environment, however it has not become a new kind.
It is also know that cats of different breeds can mate and produce offspring, look at the list below.
male lion and a female tiger produce Ligers
female lion and a male tiger = Tigon
Bobcat and lynx = Lynxcat
bobcat and domestic cat = Blynx
This shows that they are the same kind. Thus different sizes of cats can interbreed which suggests there is only one cat kind.
This is also true of horses as you can see in the following list.
male zebra and female donkey produce zonkey
male zebra and female horse = zorse
male horse and female zebra = hebra
horse and donkey = mule
Thus the Horse kind is made up of donkeys, zebras, and horses.
Wolphin is the offspring of a bottlenose dolphin (genus Tursiops) and a false killer whale (genus Pseudorca). At Hawaii’s Sea Life Park in 1985, such a mating occurred. Dolphin and Whale are thought of as separate genera, but this shows they are in fact the same species. Thus while it is hard to determent species, we can say they are the same kind.
This shows that the number of kinds is much lower than the number of species. God created kinds, he did not create in the six days the species we have today.
Copyright © Mark J Farquharson 2009