In ancient times, the land of Israel was heavily forested. In Joshua’s day, the hills in Israel’s heartland (the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh) were called “the wood country” because of the extensive forests (Josh 17:15,18). Absalom was killed in the trans-Jordanian oak forest of …
Several recent studies have drawn attention to the work of bumblebees in horticulture.
In February of this year the ABC ran an article to the title: “Bumblebees can create mental imagery, a ‘building block of consciousness,’ study suggests.” The article went on to say: “Humans…
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There is a great deal of difference between the pasturelands which did not have enough water to grow crops, but still had enough grass to feed the animals, and the “great and terrible wilderness” of Sinai. Yet the same Hebrew word is used to describe both types of terrain. What links these two…
The Venus flytrap is indigenous to the swampy regions of Carolina in the USA. It lives in nutrient-poor soil and depends on capturing insects to make up for the deficiency of certain elements in its habitat.
The plant has an elaborate system to trap and digest insects, which other plants …
Recent torrential downpours in northern Israel have broken a 50-year record of rainfall within a two week period, the Israel Meteorological Service (IMS) recently announced. Just since the start of January 2020, the rainfall accumulation in the north has surpassed the month’s average in …
How insects fly has been a mystery to scientists for many years. How can, say, a big heavy bumblebee beat its tiny wings and fly? According to the conventional laws of aerodynamics, insects cannot fly. Studies of animal flight have attained a new level of detail over the last decade, due to …
The Coney
The Hebrew word for coney is shaphan, which means “to conceal”. In Scripture, conies are described as “a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks” (Prov 30:26; Psa 104:18). They are gregarious, and “exceeding wise” (Prov 30:24). They are described in Levi…
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Over the last decade researchers have been looking at how geckos can scamper up glass and seem to be able to cling to any surface.
Only in recent years has their secret been revealed with the aid of an electron microscope. Microscopic hairs called spatulae exist on their foot pads and toe…
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The Hebrew word for ostrich is renan which means “a piercing cry; a wail”. In Job 30:29, Job said of himself, “I am a brother of jackals, and a companion of ostriches” (NKJV) because he felt desolate and isolated, unable to utter anything apart from the shrill doleful noise of the …
Without ligaments and tendons our skeletal frame would be just a pile of unconnected bones. Ligaments are elastic structures which connect bone to bone in our joints, whilst tendons are cord-like inelastic structures that connect muscles to bones. Tendons are under extreme stress when mu…
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