Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, rotates so slowly that one day there lasts about 59 earth days. The planet has only three days in each of its years, and the sunny side is so hot that lead would easily melt on its surface.

How does a single-cell egg turn into a swimming, metabolizing, hunting tadpole? Common understanding holds that frog DNA carries the required instructional building plans. However, developmental biologists serendipitously discovered that tiny facial features were outlined with bioelectricity just prior to their formation inside frog eggs.

Appealing to public emotions is a tool employed by politicians, media, and anyone trying to win supporters for a specific agenda. Naturally, such efforts can skew or omit facts, as is often the case in mainstream presentations of the ongoing battle between evolution and creation science. A recent Discovery News feature provides a telling example of this particular ploy.

Does it matter whether the larvae of one fruit fly species have hairy backs while those of another are smooth? Well, for scientists who believe both species descended from the same ancestor population, it could perhaps be taken as an example of evolution in action. The genetic causes for these particular differences, however, clearly show that no Darwinian processes were involved.