← Nat Theo Nature Lessons Rooted in the Bible
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- [00:01]
Erin Lyneum
This summer we invite you to explore God's wild and wonderful world in a whole new way with Magnify A wild and wonderful Summer Adventure. This nine week experience is a child led low prep way to enjoy meaningful nature study right where you live. Each week your family will discover and delight in God's fingerprints through birds, flowers, amphibians, insects, fungi and more. With guided nature journaling, trusted book and resource lists, devotions and three live classes with me throughout the summer, Magnify gives you everything you need for a season of wonder, learning and faith filled discovery. Magnify is designed to help your family slow down, step outside and stand in awe of God's creation. Join us this summer@thenaturaltheologyproject.com magnify or through the link in our show notes.
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Child Listener
Hello world. Wake me up to another good Good morning. Time to go.
- [01:10]
Erin Lyneum
Are you ready to explore God's wild and wonderful world? Welcome to the Nat Theo Podcast. I'm your host Erin Lyneum. I'm a certified Master naturalist, Bible teacher and author and I am so excited to div into God's written word, the Bible and His created world with you. Can you think of some shapes in nature? Bees make hexagon shaped cells in their hives and snails have spiral shaped shells. Jellyfish look like the shape of a bell and turtles have dome shaped shells. I saw that just this week when we had a huge snapping turtle in the creek in our neighborhood. God used a whole lot of shapes throughout creation and today we are learning about a special star shaped animal that he made, the sea star, sometimes called a starfish. Here is our trail map.
- [02:22]
Child Listener
Are you ready?
- [02:24]
Erin Lyneum
We are going to learn. Is a sea star a starfish? How does a sea star regrow an arm? How do sea stars move and how can we walk in God's ways? Before we hit the trail, let's thank our sponsor who helped make this lesson possible. Master Books if you love learning about God's sea creatures like the sea stars, you will love the Sensational Sea Creatures books book by Master Books. Discover God's designs in playful clownfish, poisonous lionfish, bottlenose dolphins, brainless jellyfish, speedy sea turtles and so many more marvelous underwater creatures. Sensational Sea Creatures is a part of the Marvels of Creation series along with breathtaking birds and magnificent mammals. Enjoy these full color books showcasing God's marvelous creatures. Visit masterbooks.com to explore their entire library including many wonderful nature and science books from a Biblical worldview. Find more at the link in our show Notes. It's time for Our trivia question how many arms can a sea star have? A5, B10, C24 or D50? Again, how many arms can a sea star have? A5, B 10, C24 or D50? Take a guess and we will find out at the end of today's lesson. Annette Club members, after this lesson, click over to the bonus video where I will show you a sea star that my family saw at an aquarium moving around with its hundreds of feet and learn how sea stars eat by sticking their stomachs outside of their mouths. You can find that bonus video at the link in our show notes or in your Nat Theo Club Dashboard. All right, let's hit the trail. You have probably heard of a starfish before, but what is a starfish? Is it a fish? The creature we are learning about today, the unique animals with pointed arms that give them the body shape of a star were called starfish for hundreds of years. But this is a confusing nickname because they are not actually fish. Over the past 50 years or so, scientists have encouraged people to start calling these creatures sea stars instead of starfish. So if you hear about a creature called a starfish, it is probably a sea star. But what exactly is a sea star if it's not a fish? Sea stars are in a phylum or a large category of creatures called echinoderms. Echinoderm means spiny skin. Most animals in this category have spiky skin, including sea stars, brittle stars, feather stars, sea urchins, and sand dollars. The only animals in this category without spiky skin are the sea cucumbers. And all echinoderms have a symmetrical body. A symmetrical body means that they have body parts arranged evenly around the middle, kind of like pizza slices or the points of a star. God made a lot of fascinating creatures in the echinoderm category. When we look at their details, they are sorted into smaller categories. And sea stars belong to a class or a smaller category called Asteroidea. Asteroidea is the group of echinoderms that include sea stars. We are not only talking about a few sea stars. There are around 1,500 to 2,000 different species of sea stars. Picture all of those amazing colorful star shaped animals that God designed decorating the ocean like stars decorate a night sky. This reminds me of a great question from one of our listeners.
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Child Listener
My name is lucy, I am 7 years old and live in Canada. I want to know what is a chocolate chip starfish?
- [07:03]
Erin Lyneum
Lucy wants to know what is a chocolate chip starfish? I love this question because I really enjoy seeing chocolate chip Sea stars at the aquarium. They are a unique sea star that God made that can remind us of a tasty chocolate chip cookie. You might have seen pictures or videos of so called sea stars that have long skinny arms that kind of look like snakes. Those are not sea stars. They are a different kind of echinoderm called brittle stars. God made them unique from sea stars and they are in a different class or category. So if you see a sea creature with long wavy snake like arms attached to a center knob, that is a brittle star. But if you see a star shaped creature with shorter pointed arms extending out from its central body, that is a sea star. The pointed arms of a sea star are called rays. They extend right out from the central body, making the star shaped body look like one solid piece. A star shaped body is not the only thing that makes sea stars unique. Like other echinoderms, sea stars do not have a brain or a heart. Instead, they have a central nerve system running throughout their bodies that help them to sense the world around them, move around and eat. Let's learn about the special way that God designed sea stars to stay healthy by regrowing their ray arms. If a sea star loses one of its ray arms, it can regrow it. And God did not limit this ability to sea stars. He designed some other creatures to be able to regrow parts of their bodies. One of our listeners wanted to know more about this.
- [09:00]
Child Listener
Hi, my name is Miles, I'm five years old and I live in Great Falls, Montana. And I want to know, how do lizards regrow their tails?
- [09:12]
Erin Lyneum
I'm glad you asked this question, Myles. Some lizards can regrow their tails in a similar way to how sea stars regrow their arms. This process is called regeneration. Regeneration is the ability to regrow a lost or damaged body part. Let's discover how God engineered this amazing process and how regeneration actually works. Sea stars can lose a ray and some lizards can lose their tail through a process called autotomy. Autotomy is when an animal purposely drops or sheds a body part like an arm or a tail to escape danger. If a sea star sheds a ray arm to escape a predator, its body gets to work creating new cells. Cells are like the tiny building blocks inside every living thing. Although they are much more detailed than a Lego block that you might use to build a block house or a truck. The cells inside of living things are like tiny factories. God made all kinds of different cells with all different jobs to do. Listen to lesson 57 at the link in our show notes to discover God's Detailed designs in cells. When a sea star's ray is damaged, Their bodies seal off the injured area to prevent any further harm. Then their bodies go to work, creating a cluster of cells called a blastema at the site of the injury. The blastema cells can regrow body parts. I think it's amazing that God gave some animals this ability. Inside of their tiny cells, which are so small that we cannot see them without a microscope, God wrote special instructions to build new cells in a blastema that then grow a new body part. That is some magnificent engineering. So whether it's a lizard regrowing a tail or an axolotl regrowing a fin, or a sea star regrowing an arm, God designed their cells to seal off the site of the injury and then to get to work creating new cells, tissues, and body parts. Regrowing a ray takes time, sometimes around a year. But a sea star's regeneration is not limited to just regrowing arms. One of our listeners called in with this great sea star question.
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Child Listener
Hello, my name is Charlotte. I'm 11 years old and I live in Colorado. My question is, if a starfish loses an arm, Can a new starfish grow from that broken arm?
- [12:03]
Erin Lyneum
That is a fascinating question, Charlotte. We learned that sea stars can regrow arms. But can an entirely new sea star grow from just an arm? Yes, they can. If a sea star's ray gets detached and part of the central disk of the body is still attached to the ray, a new sea star can grow from the ray. Put simply, the sea star can clone itself. God certainly dialed in a sea star's regeneration to work magnificently. I was recently watching a sea star at an aquarium, and what caught my attention was how it was moving around. The sea star was holding itself to the side of the glass tank. So I was looking at its underside. Small tube like structures came out from under the sea star, and they were moving almost like a wave. As they moved, the sea star slowly inched across the glass side of the aquarium. The tube like things that I was watching are tube feet. A sea star's tube feet are tiny tube shaped body parts with suction cups on the end that help a sea star move, cling to surfaces, and hold prey. A single sea star can have hundreds to thousands of tube feet. And each tube feet has a suction cup at the end, Similar to the suction discs that you might see on an octopus's arms. Using the suction cups, A sea star can push and pull itself across a surface. A sea star has many, many feet. But how does it know where it is going. Without a brain, sea stars cannot think and make decisions like we can. They don't come to a fork in the trail or sandy ocean bottom and think, hmm, if I go this way, I might find food, or if I go this way, there might be shelter. But even though they can't think this way or make decisions like we can, they can sense what is going on around them. Because even though they do not have a brain, most sea stars have eyes. Did you know sea stars have eyes? Have you ever seen eyes on a sea star? Where do you think their eyes are? If we flip a sea star over, will there be two big eyes on its underside staring back at us? Nope. A sea star's eyes are hard to find and they are not like our eyes. At the tip of each ray or arm, there is a single tiny eye spot. The eye spot can be as tiny as a needle pinpoint, and it is often a different color from the rest of the ray. Sea stars cannot see details like we do, but their eye spots help them to sense light and shadows and in some cases help them to see big shapes and objects which can help them navigate their habitat. Tiny eye spots at the tips of each ray and Thousands of suction cup feet God used a lot of great creativity in designing the sea star. We do not have thousands of feet, and that's probably a good thing. If I had thousands of feet, I would most likely be tripping over myself all of the time. Although thousands of feet might come in handy in a game of soccer or hopscotch or a game of Twister or for math when I have already counted all of my fingers and I need some toes to count Us humans only have two feet, but the Bible has some important things to say about our feet. Psalm 40, verse 2 says, he lifted me out of the pit of destruction, out of the sticky mud. He stood me on a rock and made my feet steady. Has your foot ever slipped in some mud and you found yourself face flat on the ground or covered in dirt? Sometimes the hard things in life can trip us up, but God lifts us back up and he sets our feet on solid ground and he helps us to walk in his ways. Psalm chapter 128, verse 1 says, Blessed are all who fear the Lord who walk in obedience to Him. To fear the Lord means to respect him and honor him in everything that we do. As we put God first in our lives, he sets our feet on steady ground and helps us to walk in obedience. Listener as we walk with God in faith, we will have opportunities to share God's truth and love with others. Romans 10:14 15 shares about people needing to hear the good news of Jesus. Listen closely. How then can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. I read this verse often when I was a teenager and I was traveling around the world on missions trips to share God's truth and love with others. But do you know what? We can also share God's truth right where we are. Right where we live, eat, play, work and learn. Wherever our feet take us, we can spread God's love and goodness. Is there someone in your life who needs to hear about God and His love? Ask God to help you spread his good news today and wherever your feet take you in the future. In Ephesians chapter 6, we learn about the armor of God and one verse talks specifically about our feet. Listen to verse 15. On your feet wear the good news of peace to help you stand strong. While we do not have thousands of feet like a sea star, God gave us feet to take us to great places. And wherever he leads us, we can be ready to share his good news of peace. It's time to answer a question from one of our listeners. Here is today's question.
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Child Listener
Hi, my name is Malachi and I'm four and how can turtles swim without closing their eyes?
- [19:31]
Erin Lyneum
What a great question Malachi. How can turtles swim without closing their eyes? If you open your eyes under the water while you're swimming, you will probably get sore red eyes. So why doesn't this happen to turtles? Well, turtles need to see where they are going while they're swimming so that they can avoid predators, find food and navigate the water. So God gave them a very special third eyelid called a nictitating membrane. This third eyelid slides across the eye sideways and keeps the water and other debris from hurting the turtle's eye. Kind of like a built in pair of goggles. A turtle's third eyelid is a brilliant and caring design from God to help keep a turtle's vision sharp even while underwater. You might wish for special eyelids while swimming, but your swimming goggles will do the trick just fine. Thanks for the great question Malachi. Stay curious about God's wild and wonderful world and Nat theo club members after this lesson remember to up clean click over to the bonus video where I will show you a video I took of a sea star moving across its glass aquarium and we will learn how sea stars eat by pushing their stomach outside of their mouth. Find that bonus video at the link in our show notes or in your Nat Theo Club Dashboard. It's time to answer our trivia question. How many arms can a sea star have? A. 5, B10, C24 or D50? The answer is D50. Most sea stars have five arms and some can have up to 24 arms, but the Antarctic sun star can have up to 50 arms. That is a very fun design. Now it's your turn to explore. Go on a nature walk and look for shapes in creation. Can you find circles, ovals, squares, teardrops, stars or diamonds? Bring a nature journal and draw each shape that you find as you marvel at God's wild and wonderful world. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this lesson on the sea star, please take a moment to send it to a friend and subscribe. Rate and review Nat Theo wherever you listen. Until next time, keep exploring God's wild and wonderful world.
- [22:11]
Child Listener
We are all looking for adventure. We are all looking for adventure. We are all looking for adventure. We are all looking for adventure.