A lot of people don’t believe in God because they don’t believe the Bible to be true. One of the stories they use to “prove” that the Bible is made up fiction is the story of Noah and the Ark. When most people think of Noah and the Ark, you imagine the little bubble boat with tons of animals squeezed onto it.
A giant boat couldn’t have possibly carried all the animals on earth, could it?
Well, let’s look at the details and logistics of this and break it down for everyone.
THE SIZE OF THE ARK:
Length – 300 cubits
Width – 50 cubits
Height – 30 cubits
Cubit is from your finger to your elbow, so it’s 18 inches.
So in today’s measurements it would have been:
450 feet long
45 feet long
75 feet wide
The volume of the ark was 1,518,750 feet
Box car is 50 to 60 feet long, 9 feet wide, and 10 to 11 feet high.
The volume of a single boxcar is 4,500 feet
So the ark can carry the same amount that 336 box cars can.
Each boxcar can carry anywhere from 263,000 pounds to 286,000 pounds. Even going with the lowest amount a single boxcar could carry (263,000 pounds) The Ark could have carried 88,368,000 pounds.
ANIMALS:
Adults didn’t have to be taken onto the Ark. Noah could have taken younger species, babies, one male and female of each, plus seven of each clean animal, seven birds)
Scientists ESTIMATE that there are 8.7 million species on earth. Of those, 1 to 2 million are again, ESTIMATED to be animal species.
There are 146 mammal families according to one researcher
There are 6 thousand different mammal groups, or kinds.
There are 3 classes of amphibians (frogs, toads, newts and salamanders, and caecillians). Frogs and toads have 6,500 species; newts and salamanders have 680 species, and caecillians have 205 species)
8,200 reptile species divided into four classes (crocodiles, alligators, sphenodonita, lizards, snakes, turtles, and tortoises.
10,000 species of birds.
700 species of dinosaur
10 different clean animals, so 70 extras and 7 birds of each kind, so 70,000 for that.
Let’s do our math.
FINAL CONCLUSIONS:
Taking in these numbers listed above, with the number of animals Noah took on the Ark (two of every kind, plus seven of every clean animal, and seven of every bird), there would have been 91,655 animals on the Ark. And even if you add all the dinosaurs to this, the number goes up to 92,355.
The animals could have been young, which means the average size would have been about the size of a sheep.
Sheep weigh anywhere from 99 to 300 pounds. Let’s take the highest number (300) and multiply it by the number of animals on the Ark.
That’s a total of 27,706,500 pounds.
Remember, the Ark could carry 88,368,000 pounds. Which means with all the animals on the Ark, we still have 60,661,500 pounds left, which leaves plenty of room for Noah, his three sons, their wives, and all the food.
Awesome, I didn’t know all that.