Even the “lowest” forms of life, such as bacteria, have built-in abilities and intelligence. Some bacteria can move toward the food they like and away from environments which are harmful to them. The E. coli bacterium is so tiny that it has difficulty moving through water in the same way a human would have trouble swimming through molasses. Therefore, E. coli was designed with whiplike hairs called flagella which allow it to move.
E. coli can only move when its flagella are rotating. When rotated counterclockwise, its six to eight flagella wind together, forming a propellor that rotates at a fantastic 18,000 revolutions per minute. This allows the bacterium to move in a straight line. Sometimes the E. coli reverses its propellor, causing the whiplike hairs to unwrap and spin the bacterium into a tumble.
Microbiologists have yet to figure out how a bacterium knows where it wants to go in order to find food. The bacterium must have both sensors and a memory in order to know whether or not the location it is traveling to is better than where it came from. These remarkable abilities of even a tiny bacterium should cause anyone to question how it could possibly have evolved by random-chance mutations.
From A Closer Look at the Evidence by Kleiss, March 23.
