As everyone knows, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that the entire antediluvian world was vegetarian. They hold that this was God’s original purpose and further believe that the restoration prophecies (Isaiah 11:6-9; 65:25) foretell a future return to this state.
For the most part, JW publications have (wisely) avoided discussing the specifics of this belief, but one notable exception to this rule was the article "When All Nature Will Be In Harmony" which appeared in the October 8, 1982 issue of Awake!
This article basically asserted that predation is simply a learned behavior that is connected to the fall of Man in some unspecified way.
In an effort to get around the fact that some animals are obviously designed as predators, the following statement was made under the subheading "Not Designed to Kill"
"For instance most animals would continue to eat vegetation, as is the case down to this day. An example is the powerful gorilla, with its awesome fangs –fangs still used to rip and consume heavy vegetation."
The gorilla was thus held to be a vegetarian with the teeth of a carnivore. Today’s JW science quote of the day is wrong in many respects and misleading in others.
- Fangs are not a mammalian tooth type. Snakes and spiders have fangs. Land mammals with few exceptions have incisors, canines, premolars and molars.
- The elongated canines that were mistakenly labeled as "fangs" occur in the male gorilla only. This is an example of sexual dimorphism and it is a common phenomenon among mammals. In many species, antlers, teeth, tusks, horns and other natural weapons are larger in the male than in the female. The baboon and sea lion are two other examples where the canines of the male are much larger than those of the female.
- The canines of the male gorilla serve no real purpose in the gathering and consumption of food. This can be seen in the fact that female gorillas subsist on the same diet as does the male with canines that are greatly reduced in size.
- Gorillas are relatively dainty feeders that spend a lot of time manually preparing their food before they eat it. The only creature that surpasses them in this respect is Man.
- Because canines double as weapons, their length is a relatively poor indicator of dental design. That is determined primarily by the cheek teeth.
- An examination of the cheek teeth reveals that the gorilla does not have the dental design of a carnivore. The dental formula and dentition are the same as our own.
Tomorrow: "War of the Worlds"