We have the “seemingly mundane” animals—sheep, cows, pigeons—that we take for granted. Of course, they are each astounding in their own right. But God’s creation has plenty of examples of the crazy, funny, complicated, and astounding to make us wonder. Can we really look at a giraffe and say “oh yes, a long neck—it was just inevitable that evolution would produce that”, when we consider the engineering that must go into such an unusual design?

Here are a few things that make me say “wow”. They are unusual and improbable, extreme and crazy.

• Giraffe’s neck
• Elephant’s trunk
• Platypus
• Metamorphosis
• The migration of the monarch butterfly and the Australian Bogong moth
• Pregnancy and birth
• Flying fish
• Archer fish
• Frogs and chameleons catching food with their tongues
• Woodpeckers pounding their beaks into a tree
• Ice worms
• Bat sonar
• Spider’s web (both its silk thread and its ability to weave a well-structured web)
• Firefly
• Venus Flytrap (and other carnivorous plants)
• Emperor penguins doing an Antarctic winter

Do you have any favourites on your own list? Please leave a comment!