Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
2 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,819 Year: 3,076/9,624 Month: 921/1,588 Week: 104/223 Day: 2/13 Hour: 0/1


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Which animals would populate the earth if the ark was real?
Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


(1)
Message 3 of 991 (575811)
08-21-2010 5:53 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Dirk
08-20-2010 11:00 PM


Basically only insects, a few small rodents, maybe an amphibian or two. Possibly a few species of bird make it out alive. A handful of fish and other aquatic animals survive the devastation of the oceans.
After the flood the world is covered in a thick layer of mud, unsuited for most plant life, and treacherous to any large animal. The herbivores die first, unable to feed and unable to escape the predators. The predators die soon after with nothing to feed on. That leaves the smaller animals that could root through the mud to live on, surviving on the corpses of the dead, and the animal and plant matter washed up from the flood.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Dirk, posted 08-20-2010 11:00 PM Dirk has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 6 by Dr Jack, posted 08-21-2010 6:13 AM Dr Jack has seen this message but not replied
 Message 66 by glowby, posted 03-06-2012 2:23 AM Dr Jack has not replied

  
Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 5 of 991 (575814)
08-21-2010 6:12 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by bluegenes
08-21-2010 6:02 AM


No bacon, he was Jewish.
Ah, but Noah predates the Jewish laws so he might be okay.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by bluegenes, posted 08-21-2010 6:02 AM bluegenes has not replied

  
Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 6 of 991 (575815)
08-21-2010 6:13 AM
Reply to: Message 3 by Dr Jack
08-21-2010 5:53 AM


Infestation
Oh, and the animals on the Ark must have been utterly infested with parasites, and shaking with disease - after all, they all needed to survive the flood too.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by Dr Jack, posted 08-21-2010 5:53 AM Dr Jack has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 7 by Percy, posted 08-21-2010 6:30 AM Dr Jack has not replied
 Message 10 by nwr, posted 08-21-2010 8:52 AM Dr Jack has replied

  
Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 11 of 991 (575831)
08-21-2010 9:04 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by nwr
08-21-2010 8:52 AM


Re: Infestation
Oh, no. That cannot be right. There were only allowed to be two of each parasite, one male and one female. (We have to go with the literal wording, remember).
Well, of course. They'll only have taken one male and one female on board - but they're there for a year and an adult flea (for example) lays 50 eggs a day, each of which can hatch and reach adulthood within two weeks.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by nwr, posted 08-21-2010 8:52 AM nwr has seen this message but not replied

  
Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 13 of 991 (575843)
08-21-2010 10:28 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by jar
08-21-2010 10:04 AM


Viability of small populations
I'd point out that there are known island populations thought to have been established by a single pregnant female. That's even more extreme than a population of 4 individuals.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by jar, posted 08-21-2010 10:04 AM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 14 by jar, posted 08-21-2010 10:34 AM Dr Jack has not replied
 Message 15 by Dirk, posted 08-21-2010 10:52 AM Dr Jack has not replied

  
Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 17 of 991 (575853)
08-21-2010 11:45 AM
Reply to: Message 16 by Dirk
08-21-2010 11:00 AM


Most fish would die to. They're pretty sensitive to salinity levels in the water. The upheaval of the flood would wipe out the majority of fish species too.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 16 by Dirk, posted 08-21-2010 11:00 AM Dirk has not replied

  
Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 28 of 991 (575985)
08-22-2010 8:10 AM
Reply to: Message 22 by Buzsaw
08-21-2010 10:00 PM


The Genesis record did not cite the landing site high on Mt Ararat. It cited it in the mountains of Ararat, which includes the foothills which would be more suitable for exiting the hoofed animals etc from the ark.
It is a curious property of receeding water that the highest points are uncovered first. Let's look at what it says:
quote:
[4] And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.
[5] And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen
  —"Genesis 8"
So, while you're technically correct - it does specify "the mountains of Ararat" - it's also pretty clear that the waters are still covering most of the Earth, thus the Ark must have come to rest on one of the highest points of the mountain since the lower ground would still be underwater.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 22 by Buzsaw, posted 08-21-2010 10:00 PM Buzsaw has not replied

  
Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 39 of 991 (576436)
08-24-2010 5:20 AM
Reply to: Message 37 by Percy
08-23-2010 8:34 AM


Re: Viability of small populations
Genetic diversity cannot decline when you start from a single pair. With sexual species, a single pair is as low in diversity as you can get without going extinct. Diversity can only increase through mutation, so since mutational effects are generally minimal over short time periods one would not think that diversity could possibly increase.
This quite wrong. In fact, a decline is exactly what you'd expect.
To see why, let's consider a single allele, and suppose there's initially maximal genetic variation at this allele - that is, both founders are heterozygotes and don't share any of the variants. Now, either both can pass both of their gene variants onto a least one of their offspring, or one of the variants can be lost. Now, presuming there's a reasonable number of offspring the chance of any particular gene variant being lost is quite low, but there's going to be a few thousands such alleles which meant that even the relatively unlikely will happen a few hundred times.
In the next generation, things get worse, because now the only available mates are brothers and sisters and that means that the chance of the offspring being homozygotes sky-rockets.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 37 by Percy, posted 08-23-2010 8:34 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 40 by Percy, posted 08-24-2010 8:10 AM Dr Jack has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024