The Idea of an Essay, Volume 2

94 and its entire species would die if the mechanisms did not evolve in chorus. The Evolutionist agrees that the mechanisms would have had to evolve at the same time as the elongation of the neck, but they do not know how this would occur. The argument of complexity and compatibility is one that the Evolutionist has still to answer. One of the mechanism the giraffe possesses is a thickening of the skin in order to keep it from excessive bleeding when injured (Mittchel & Skinner, 2010). Lynn Hofland has a B.S. in Environmental Engineering and is an Environmental Test Engineer at NASAAmes research center. He explains in his article, “Giraffes: Animals that Stand Out in a Crowd”, how NASA has studied these unique mechanisms in giraffe legs in order to design a gravity suit worn by astronauts. According to Hofland (2013), “The secret lies in an extremely tough skin and inner fascia that prevents blood pooling [into the lower extremities]” (p. 2). The tough skin must be present because the neck of the giraffe is long. The Evolutionists must assume that, by chance, the skin thickened as the neck elongated, but they have no scientific evidence of this. The tough skin around the legs of the giraffe is one of the many mechanisms which would have had to evolve at the same time as its legs and neck in order to keep the species alive and reproducing. Another mechanism found in the legs is the narrowing of the arterial walls (Ostergaard et al., 2011). Without the narrowing of the arterial lumen (interior of the artery) inside the leg, the blood would puddle in the hoof as a result of the high blood pressure. According to K.H. Ostergaard et al. (2011) who performed numerous dissections of the arterial artery, “…[the] narrowing at knee level is apparent in the newborn giraffe, not yet exposed to gravitational pressure” (p. 696). The dissection of the fetal giraffes proved that the giraffe is born with this trait already in place. The giraffe needs this mechanism as soon as it stands up because it is at that exact moment when the giraffe will experience high blood pressure due to gravity. This is a huge problem for the Evolutionists. If the mechanism gradually evolved with its neck over long periods of time, then the baby giraffes being born during this intermediate time period would not survive due to a non-functional arterial lumen. Another mechanism the giraffe possesses is the jugular vein valves. According to Graham Mitchell’s article, “The structure and function of giraffe jugular vein valves” published in 2009, “…the