How did Noah fit two (plus 7 of some) over every species on the Ark?

Question

especially if all the species that ever lived were on earth back then? Like, he had polar bears and penguins and wooly mammoths in boxes next to Tyranasaurus Rex and Stegasaurs and such? Has anyone done the math to see if that many animals and their food could even fit on the ArK?

And, if you are going to cut and paste paragraphs of scripture, could you please translate? Thanks.

It serves no purpose to say it was fiction. The Bible, fiction or not, gives the exact dimensions of the Ark.

okay - "I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. "

Why doesn't "destroy all flesh" mean "detroy all flesh," or why doesn't "everything that is in the earth shall die" not mean "everything that is in the earth shall die"?

Everyone says there were only a few thousand animals on board.... so what was the average animal size? and what does that add up to, and would it fit on the ark? Not knowing the scripture, we are assuming that T-Rex managed to take a nap and not be a problem for 40 days?

Mainworry - does anything you have in that massive reponse answer the question?

“Male and female they will be. Of the flying creatures according to their kinds and of the domestic animals according to their kinds, of all moving animals of the ground according to their kinds, two of each will go in there to you to preserve them alive.”

So it had to include all the bird types and tryceratops and all insects and worms... right? I mean, thats what it says.

20 standard basketball courts? Okay - that's 94,000 square feet. Assuming food and stuff take up maybe 20% of the space, that about 75,000 square feet. if you allow, say, 6 square foot per animal, that allows for about 6,000 pairs of animals... but we know he had 7 each of the clean animals, so maybe he had room for 3 or 4,000 kinds of animals. Sound right?

Answer 1

Fairytale.

Answer 2

Ok there are a few answers that cover what I believe to be correct, but one thing that they did not cover is that the bible says 2 of each kind. So lets think about that. A polar bear, black bear, grizzly bear, etc are all bears. They have different characteristics much like people from different world cultures have different characteristics, but they are all bears, so we would not need 2 of each type or breed of bear, just 2 bears total. The same would be said of the large cat family. They are all part of the felinae family and so we would only need 2 total, not 2 tiger, 2 lions, 2 cheetahs, etc. So that cuts back on what you need to fit in.

From there lets think about the idea that the 2 animals were meant to begin the repopulation of their kind on earth. This would mean most likely they were very young entering the ark because God probably wanted them to have many years to bea children. So at least upon entering the ark they would not have been full grown. I have read the article that says most would have been the size of a chicken or sheep, and I agree that they may have been that size at first, but they spent almost a year (from the 2nd month of his 600th year when the rain began to the 1st month of his 601st year when all the water had dried up) on the ark, so to me they probably would have grown to full size. That being said, once you take them back to their family there still would have been room.

An article on answers in genesis talks about food and water
The Ark would probably have carried compressed and dried foodstuffs, and probably a lot of concentrated food. Perhaps Noah fed the cattle mainly on grain, plus some hay for fibre. Woodmorappe calculated that the volume of foodstuffs would have been only about 15 % of the Ark’s total volume. Drinking water would only have taken up 9.4 % of the volume. This volume would be reduced further if rainwater was collected and piped into troughs.

The space, feeding and excretory requirements were adequate even if the animals had normal day/night sleeping cycles. But hibernation is a possibility which would reduce these requirements even more. It is true that the Bible does not mention it, but it does not rule it out either. Some creationists suggest that God created the hibernation instinct for the animals on the Ark, but we should not be dogmatic either way.

Some skeptics argue that food taken on board rules out hibernation, but this is not so. Hibernating animals do not sleep all winter, despite popular portrayals, so they would still need food occasionally

Hope some of this helps. Good Luck.

Answer 3

have you ever seen that the story of Noah's Ark isn't literal yet figurative? Secondly, assuming the story of Noah's Ark is genuine, then people of that factor could have been ethnocentric and could have believed the "international" replaced into what they might see around them. So could or no longer that is achieveable to construct an ark for probable some hundred species? possibly from that attitude. The animals does not have actually been 2 mated pairs from everywhere in the comprehensive international, purely the relative geographic section. Scientists have found data of a large flood in a close-by rumored to be the landing internet site of the ark.

Answer 4

You ask a good question. One that has been asked many times over, but still deserves a well-thought out answer.

Fortunately for you, me and everyone else, someone else has already done the research so we can benefit from their work. Many people have written books, articles & papers on the subject. Here are two very good books.

"The Genesis Flood" -- probably out of print now but you can still buy used

"Noah's Ark: a Feasibility Study" and other books by John Woodmorappe which you can get on amazon.com ...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0932766412/ref=dp_olp_2/102-0635650-9567330

Another good source, especially if you are looking for the "Reader's Digest"-type version ...
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i2/animals.asp

All of the studies show the same thing -- it was very possible that all of the living land creatures at that time could have been saved by the ark.

Read the above references -- they are very interesting.

Keep asking questions and you will find "the truth" which will not be exactly what you will get from the popular/elitest media and the Hollywood types.

p.s. Did you know that the ark is also mentioned in the Koran and there is a story about it also in ancient Hindu religions? ...hmm, interesting.

Think about it. Figure it out!

Good luck and God bless!

Answer 5

Genesis 6:15 in the Bible tells us the Ark's dimensions were at least 135 meters long (300 cubits), 22.5 meters wide (50 cubits), and 13.5 meters high (30 cubits). That's 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high! It could have been larger because several larger-sized cubits were used. But the 45-centimeter (18-inch) cubit is long enough to show the enormous size of the Ark.

Noah's Ark was three stories high (Genesis 6:16). Its total deck area was equivalent to the area of about 20 standard college basketball courts or 36 lawn tennis courts.

if you cant fit 2 of each animal on a boat that big then you dont know what your doing. I have a feeling that dinosaurs werent on the ark, but they lived at that time. And people dont realize that before the flood the world was tropical, which means polar bears and penquins were a tropical species. once they moved to where antartica was they adapted to the cold temperatures. after the flood antartica was still part of pangea. not til after the tower of babel was the earth split into continents.

Answer 6

One commonly raised problem is ‘How could Noah fit all those huge dinosaurs on the Ark?’ First, of the 668 supposed dinosaur genera, only 106 weighed more than ten tons when fully grown. Second, the Bible does not say that the animals had to be fully-grown. The largest animals were probably represented by ‘teenage’ or even younger specimens. It may seem surprising, but the median size of all animals on the Ark would most likely have been that of a small rat, according to Woodmorappe’s up-to-date tabulations, while only about 11 percent would have been much larger than a sheep.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/answersbook/arksize13.asp

Answer 7

In the world of fiction, anything is possible. He could have put 10 animals of every single species on earth if the writers wanted to create that scenario.
Anyone of us is capable of writing a story and convincing at least a few people that the story is true. It shouldn't be to hard considering all the gullible people in the world.

Answer 8

Whichever one of the four authors of Genesis put that tale in, he took an episode from the Epic of Gilgamesh, (a Sumerian story), filed off the serial numbers, changed the names and made it over as a object lesson in the power of the one God.

It has no more relationship to real history than has the tale of Washington's chopping down the cherry tree.

Both are fictional events told to illustrate a point having nothing to do with historical accuracy.

Answer 9

If it's possible to put the entire worlds population in the state of Texas, why couldnt a vessle the size Noah built hold 30 thousand or so species of animals?

Answer 10

The passenger list of the ark was quite impressive. Besides Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives, living creatures “of every sort of flesh, two of each,” were to be taken aboard. “Male and female they will be. Of the flying creatures according to their kinds and of the domestic animals according to their kinds, of all moving animals of the ground according to their kinds, two of each will go in there to you to preserve them alive.” Of the clean beasts and fowls, seven of each kind were to be taken. A great quantity and variety of food for all these creatures, to last for more than a year, also had to be stowed away.—Ge 6:18-21; 7:2, 3.

The “kinds” of animals selected had reference to the clear-cut and unalterable boundaries or limits set by the Creator, within which boundaries creatures are capable of breeding “according to their kinds.” It has been estimated by some that the hundreds of thousands of species of animals today could be reduced to a comparatively few family “kinds”—the horse kind and the cow kind, to mention but two. The breeding boundaries according to “kind” established by Jehovah were not and could not be crossed. With this in mind some investigators have said that, had there been as few as 43 “kinds” of mammals, 74 “kinds” of birds, and 10 “kinds” of reptiles in the ark, they could have produced the variety of species known today. Others have been more liberal in estimating that 72 “kinds” of quadrupeds and less than 200 bird “kinds” were all that were required. That the great variety of animal life known today could have come from inbreeding within so few “kinds” following the Flood is proved by the endless variety of humankind—short, tall, fat, thin, with countless variations in the color of hair, eyes, and skin—all of whom sprang from the one family of Noah.

These estimates may seem too restrictive to some, especially since such sources as The Encyclopedia Americana indicate that there are upwards of 1,300,000 species of animals. (1977, Vol. 1, pp. 859-873) However, over 60 percent of these are insects. Breaking these figures down further, of the 24,000 amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, 10,000 are birds, 9,000 are reptiles and amphibians, many of which could have survived outside the ark, and only 5,000 are mammals, including whales and porpoises, which would have also remained outside the ark. Other researchers estimate that there are only about 290 species of land mammals larger than sheep and about 1,360 smaller than rats. (The Deluge Story in Stone, by B. C. Nelson, 1949, p. 156; The Flood in the Light of the Bible, Geology, and Archaeology, by A. M. Rehwinkel, 1957, p. 69) So, even if estimates are based on these expanded figures, the ark could easily have accommodated a pair of all these animals.

Answer 11

if anything, the flood was localized. the sheer numbers of every species worldwide could not fit on an ark that size, in addition to the logistics of how to feed them, get rid of their waste, keep predators from prey, etc.