| How did Noah fit all the animals on the Ark? |
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 How did Noah fit all the animals on the ark?by Tas Walker
This question has two parts—the number of animals, and the size of the Ark. Every species of living creature did not need to go on board. Only the animals that were air breathing (‘all flesh in which there is the breath of life’ (Gen 7:15)) and land dwelling (‘all flesh died that moved on the earth’ (Gen 7: 21)). So fish did not go on; they are not air breathing. Whales and dolphins did not go on either. Although they breath air, they are not land-dwelling. Fish and whales survive under water, although some die during floods when sediment and other debris contaminate the water. We find many marine fossils that were buried during the Flood. Insects were probably not collected and housed on the Ark. They do not have nostrils (Gen 7:22) to breath air, and can survive floods on floating debris such as vegetation mats. No doubt many insects hopped on board anyway. So, that reduces the number of species. But how many animals? Take dogs, for example, would Noah have taken two Alsatians, two cocker spaniels, two collies, two red setters, etc.? No, he would have needed just one pair of dogs, a mongrel kind like the wolf. We know that the different breeds of dogs have been produced from the wolf, and this only took a few thousand years. That is not evolution; that’s just dogs. So we have many more different kinds of animals today than Noah took on the Ark. They have diversified in the 4500 years since the Flood. The actual number of Animals Noah put on board depends on what a biblical ‘kind’ is.
Woodmorappe in his book ‘Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study’ (available on Amazon) calculated that the number of animals would have been less than 16,000, assuming that a biblical kind is roughly equivalent to the group of animals we call a genus today. However, if the biblical kind is equivalent to the family grouping, then there would have only been 2,000 animals. Probably it was somewhere in between. The animals would have been easily housed in small enclosures because most animals are small, typically the size of a rabbit. Even large animals were once small, so Noah could have taken maturing animals on board, much smaller than when they are fully grown. And the size of the Ark? It was huge. It had a capacity of over 500 railroad cattle cars, enough to carry more than 120,000 sheep. So there was plenty of room on the Ark for the animals, for their food and water, and for Noah and his family. Share this article with your social network        |
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