Darwin’s Sticky Hairs — and the Creator Behind Them

New York (VINNEWS/Rabbi Yair Hoffman)

As a child, my mother, aleha HaShalom, would take me on walks and would always point to the beauty around these walks – and point out the Niflaos HaBorei.  She would say, “Mah Rabu Maasecha Hashem – mi Chamocha.”  

Today, on her yahrtzeit, 22 Av, I would like you to join me on one of these walks.  Close your eyes, and open your mind’s eye.  We are hiking, very high (in a geohraphic sense) in the mountains of southwestern China.  On this walk are you, me, my mother – a fount of Emunah, and a guest – that guest is Charles Darwin.  

Charles Darwin never went to China in his life. Nut he has joined the three of us on this imaginary hike.  Darwin had studied two European plants as cultivated garden specimens at his home, Down House, in Kent, England, while writing his 1875 book [Insectivorous Plants].  These plants were Saxifraga rotundifolia and Saxifraga umbrosa.  He made a prediction and tried to prove it, but couldn’t.  He said that somewhere, somehow, the Saxifraga would..

It would or could..

eat meat.

Now as the four of us are walking, we encounter Saxifraga candelabrum.

It is a small flowering plant which grows punkt where we are walking – high in the mountains of southwestern China.  And according to a study published this week in the journal Nature Communications it turns out to be a meat eater.  The study answered a question that Charles Darwin asked back in 1875 and could not resolve. 

Here is how this small, flowering plant actually works. The plant gives off a smell that attracts tiny gnats. The gnats land on its stems and get stuck on sticky hairs. The plant then releases a chemical called phosphatase that dissolves the insect. Finally, the plant soaks up the nitrogen from the insect’s body and uses it as food. Scientists proved this last step by tagging the nitrogen in the insects and actually watching it move into the plant.

Four Parts That Only Work Together

But let us, in our walk, look carefully at what this plant actually has to do.

First, it must produce a scent that gnats find attractive.

Second, it must make glue that is sticky enough to hold a struggling insect. But not so sticky that the plant ruins itself.

Third, it must produce a digestive chemical strong enough to break down animal tissue.

Fourth, it must have a way to move the nutrients from the insect into its own system.

Now let’s take away any one of those four parts.

A scent with no trap simply feeds the gnats and sends them on their way. No meal. Oy vey.

A trap with no digestive chemical leaves the plant covered in dead bugs and nothing more. No meal. Oy vey.

A digestive chemical with no way to absorb the nutrients spills the food onto the ground. No meal. Oy vey.

The plant gains nothing until all four pieces are in place and working together. And that is the very yesod of the matter. These four abilities come from four completely different areas of biology — smell chemistry, surface structure, digestive chemistry, and nutrient transport. All four had to arrive and had to match each other before the plant got a single meal out of the arrangement.

The Plant Knows the Difference

There is yet another detail in the research that is even more remarkable than the trap itself.

The plant catches gnats. It does not catch the larger flies that pollinate its flowers.

Let us be misbonen on this, like my mother, aleha haShalom directed. The plant eats the insects it can afford to lose and spares the insects it needs in order to reproduce. Do not bite the hand that feeds you. It separates its food from its partners. It does this without a brain, without eyes, and without any ability to learn.

Fourteen Times, Independently

Scientists count more than 750 meat-eating plants out of roughly 350,000 flowering plant species. What is striking is that this ability developed separately in fourteen different plant families that are not closely related to one another. Biologists call this convergent evolution.

It is usually presented as evidence for the power of natural selection. But it must be read another way. It must reflect Yad Hashem.

Fourteen unrelated plant groups faced the same problem — soil with too little nitrogen — and fourteen times they ended up with the same complicated solution. A process that was truly random would wander in many directions. Instead it keeps arriving at the very same address. That is what happens when the range of possible outcomes has been determined far beforehand – ahead of time. Another word for narrowing the possibilities ahead of time is niflaos haBorei – design.

Torah Has a Category for This

None of this requires rejecting derech haTeva – it embraces and proves the idea of guided processes. 

The Ramban, in his famous comment at the end of Parashas Bo (Shemos 13:16), explains that the open miracles of Yetzias Mitzrayim exist in order to teach awareness of the hidden miracles — the nissim nistarim — that operate constantly inside ordinary nature. In that understanding, the laws of nature are not a replacement for Hashem’s involvement. They are the usual way that involvement is expressed.

It is the story of Purim. Hashem employed forces of history to unfold his Nissim.

The Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim regularly explains physical events through their natural causes while insisting that the entire system of causes exists because Hashem willed it.

Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, used to correspond regularly with the holy Chofetz Chaim.  Rav Kook, writing in Orot HaKodesh, addressed evolutionary theory directly and saw no conflict at all. A world that rises gradually toward its perfection, he argued, fits well with what the holy mekubalim had already taught.

Tehillim 104:24 does not say that the works of creation are many. It says kulam b’chochma asisa — all of them were made with wisdom. Chochma is not a word anyone uses to describe an accident.

The pasuk in Iyov 12:7-8 gives us a fascinating instruction: ask the animals and they will teach you, speak to the earth and it will instruct you. That is what we are doing on our walk.

The Chovos HaLevavos built an entire section of his sefer, Sha’ar HaBechina, on that very instruction — the obligation to examine the created world closely in order to know its Creator. A small mountain plant that perfumes the air to call its prey, and sorts that prey by usefulness, dissolves what it can spare, and refuses to harm its pollinator is a very good Rebbe that inculcates Emunah within us.

Darwin looked at a sticky haired plant in 1875 and guessed at a hidden function that no instrument of his century could detect. He was right, and it took 150 years to prove it.

One of the scientists commenting on the finding noted that researchers are still barely scratching the surface of what there is to know about plants. That is exactly right, and it is exactly what our mesorah has always said. The world was built with wisdom, layer beneath layer, and every generation is handed a little more of it.

Darwin was right about the plant. The question of Who wrote the plant stays exactly where it has always been — open to anyone willing, as Iyov instructed, as my mother instructed, to open our eyes..

May her neshama, Sara Bas HaRav Eliyahu, have an aliyah.  As a zchus for her neshama, please spread this article.

The author can be reached at [email protected]