In the mid-1980s, a United States fast-food hamburger chain ran a series of television ads with the slogan, “Where’s the beef?” The ads featured an elderly woman who asked this question upon receiving a competitor’s burger with oversize buns and a comically tiny patty. Since food is the focus of the second episode in the five-part PBS television series Evolution, this question seems especially appropriate. This episode, titled “Need to Feed,” aired October 21, 2026, and purportedly explained how evolution crafted the mammalian digestive system, with a particular focus on bats.¹ But like the oversize hamburger buns in the television ads, rhetoric, impressive computer visualizations, and stirring music hide an embarrassing lack of substance.

“Need to Feed” examines key steps in the presumed evolution of the bat’s digestive system. It starts by showing a tiny unnamed swimming invertebrate that both ingests nutrients and expels waste through a mouthlike opening. Mutations ostensibly transformed this unnamed creature into a worm with a through-gut. Fast-forwarding millions of years, the episode then describes how the small jawless Cambrian fossil fish Metaspriggina evolved into a fish with jaws. It fast-forwards once again to the Jurassic mammal Agilodocodon in a discussion of mammalian milk and the supposed evolution of the mammalian lower jaw. Finally, the show jumps ahead to 52 million years ago on the evolutionary timeline to discuss the fossil bat Icaronycteris.

As in the first Evolution episode “Brain Power,” difficulties in the evolutionary narrative are glossed over with “magic” words and phrases: “feeding . . . shapes [life]”; “the quest for food [drives] a lot of evolution”; “the need to feed [made] us who we are today . . . and [shaped] animal life on our planet.”^1,2 However, these empty assertions should not be mistaken for evidence.³

In fact, for those keeping score, “Need to Feed” presents zero actual evidence for this supposed evolutionary story. As acknowledged in the episode, there is no fossil evidence for the hypothetical swimming invertebrate that evolved a through-gut. While the jawless Cambrian Metaspriggina is a real fossil fish, the supposed transition between jawless and jawed fish remains unknown, leaving the origin of jaws as “one of the, the [sic] biggest mysteries in animal evolution.”¹ While Agilodocodon was probably a real mammal that nursed its young, the show never actually explains the origin of mammalian milk, recognizing this to be “still a bit of a mystery.”¹ As for the supposed evolution of the mammalian lower jaw, the episode claims jaw bones were transformed into two tiny bones of the mammalian inner ear. This is acknowledged, unironically, by the NOVA webpage, as “unlikely” (and yet AI visualizations make evolution look so easy!).¹ Regarding this supposed evolutionary change, pioneering creationist Duane Gish dryly remarked, “No explanation is given how the intermediates managed to hear while this was going on.”^4–6 And Icaronycteris is recognized in “Need to Feed” as a true bat, not a transitional form leading to bats: “The first bat fossils we find, they’re already bats. They’re not a half-bat. They’re not in transition to becoming a bat.”¹

Like the first episode in this series, “Need to Feed” was long on visuals and rhetoric, but like hamburger buns without a patty, it was very much a “nothing burger.”

References

1. Bone, F., dir. NOVA. Season 53, episode 14, “Evolution: Need to Feed.” Aired October 21, 2026, on PBS. Accessed October 27, 2026.
2. Hebert, J. Watching PBS: Don’t Think Too Hard About the Brain’s Origin! Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org October 26, 2026, accessed October 26, 2026.
3. Guliuzza, R. J. 2010. Unmasking Evolution’s Magic Words. Acts & Facts. 39 (3): 10–11.
4. Gish, D. 1981. The Mammal-Like Reptiles. Acts & Facts.
5. See also Doyle, S. 2011. ‘Transitional Form’ in Mammal Ear Evolution—More Cacophony. Journal of Creation. 25 (3): 42–45.
6. Cserhati, M. 2019. Did the Ear Bones of Mammals Really Evolve from the Jawbones of Reptiles? Posted on creation.com July 2, 2019, accessed October 26, 2026.

* Dr. Hebert is a research scientist at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Dallas.