Meet the peregrine falcon. You can spot it by its bluish-grey back and wings, the white and black spots on its belly and the black stripes on its whitish face resembling a Tom Selleck mustache. It usually weighs between 1 to 3½ pounds, and can be up to 20 inches long, with a 46-inch wingspan. It is found on every continent except for Antarctica. None of the peregrine falcon’s features seem extraordinary—at first.

The peregrine falcon swoops on its prey in a swift, steep dive called a stoop. Its signature attack is swift and effective—and makes it the fastest creature known to man. That’s why this falcon is “nature’s top gun.”

When on the hunt, the peregrine relies on its sharp vision to locate its target. Flying at a typical speed of 24 mph to 67 mph, generated by a flapping rate of up to four wing-beats per second, it climbs high into the skies to gain altitude. Unlike an eagle, whose wings are designed for soaring, the peregrine’s wings are designed for speed and maneuverability. The black “moustache” patches on its face act like a footballer’s eye black, absorbing light and thus minimizing the glare from the ground and making it easier for the peregrine falcon to focus on its prey.

With the target in focus, the bird begins its stoop. The falcon sweeps back its pointed wings and draws them close to its body. It folds its tail and tucks in its feet. One wing pushes forward, and the head tucks in to that side while the other wing pulls back. All this, together with its stiff feathers, drastically minimizes the cross-section of the falcon’s body that is presented to the air: a perfect, aerodynamic, teardrop shape. As the falcon cuts through the atmosphere, a transparent nictitating membrane (a “third eyelid,” after the upper and lower eyelids) clears debris from the eyes and lubricates them. It reaches a terminal velocity as high as 200 mph or more, depending on wind speed and duration of the dive. No other living thing on earth moves that fast.

This remarkable speed is a proof that “nature’s top gun” could not have evolved. This bird had to be specially designed and crafted to achieve such impressive feats.

Most birds dare not attempt the efficient high-speed stoop of the peregrine falcon. Their lungs would explode if they tried. The first “birds” to try were man-made ones: jet aircraft. The results were catastrophic. Jet engineers reacted to their failed designs by consulting—in the words of pilot and master falconer Ken Franklin—the “blueprint for aeronautical engineering:” birds. One aeronautic feature engineers observed on the peregrine falcon is a small cone slightly protruding in its nostrils. This is called a baffle. The baffle’s complex design slows down the flow of air entering the bird’s lungs. This is the same design now employed in jet engines.

There is in fact, an entire discipline of studying and imitating nature’s models, processes and elements: biomimicry. Biomimicry innovations stem from creatures like the peregrine falcon. (Never mind any possible patent infringement against the original Designer).

Evolution vs. Logic

One biomimicry institution refers to its practice as “a natural progression for an evolutionary leap.” But doesn’t copying nature in itself prove that nature had a Creator more intelligent than man? The creations around us display what works, what’s efficient, what lasts—the answers to what human beings are grappling with.

Biomimics might answer: Man is, in a few years, learning from nature what nature learned the hard way for billions of years.

Yet this human reasoning is full of holes. A 200-mile-per-hour stooping speed of a bird is either a characteristic it simply has, or doesn’t. A bird cannot just learn it abruptly, or even gradually. Its lungs would explode each time it tried. It would only be known to us as a fossil. Consider:

• If birds evolved from one ancestor, then either this ancestor had falcon-like baffles in its nostrils, or it didn’t. According to evolution, if the baffles were advantageous, birds would have kept them. If they were not, then they would have disappeared over time.
• If the bird ancestor had baffles in its nostrils, then why is it that almost only falcons retained them? And why would the other birds lose them if they would make them such swift, efficient flyers?
• If the bird ancestor didn’t have baffles, then peregrine falcons would never be as fast as they are.
• If the need (need is a supposed primary driver of evolution) for a 200-mile-per-hour stoop stimulated the growth of baffles, then each attempt to exercise that growth-stimulating need would always end in birds plummeting to their deaths.

The peregrine falcon does not plummet to its death in a stoop, because it did not evolve. An intelligent Creator intricately and purposefully designed it. When evolutionary biomimics imitate “nature’s genius,” in this bird, they are unwittingly acknowledging, and learning from the peregrine’s Creator. They just fail to acknowledge His “intellectual property.” He made the peregrine falcon unique and extraordinary. No wonder it is “nature’s top gun.”