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First, Noah was commanded to take 7 of each; that is male and female -prob. 14 tot. for one "kind" of clean animal and 4 - 8 tot. of unclean.(Gen.7:2-3).
—shiloh
It depends on which part of Genesis you believe. Genesis 6:19 states that he took two of every sort of animal, male and female. Then in Genesis 7:2 it states that Noah took seven of every clean animal and two of every unclean animal. Then in Genesis 7:3 it states that he took seven of every fowl. With these passages contradicting each other, which are we supposed to believe?
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Furthermore, "kind" and modern day species do not necessarily belong in the same catagory.
—shiloh
The problem with this is that if there were only representatives for each genera or family rather than every species, it would not explain the diversity we see within those families and genera today.
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These numbers are fine for repopulation esp. with great genetic diversity within these early "kinds."
—shiloh
No it is not. If you take two felines (two tigers for example) and breed them, they are only going to produce tigers. So explain to me how two representatives of felines can become the 41 species of felines that we see today in such a short period of time? The same goes for every other species of animals.
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Also, there would have been extra room on the ark for storage of food.
—shiloh
Not enough room. The ark was only 450 feet long, three stories high, and it only had one 6 inch window at the top. It’s not just the number of the animals that causes a problem, it’s also the size of the animals. Also, how did Noah get the highly specialised diets that many animals require?
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There is also the issue of hibernation
—shiloh
Not that many animals actually hibernate, and even the ones that do only hibernate for a season. The animals were supposedly on the ark for just over a year. No animal that I’ve heard of would hibernate for this amount of time. Add on the fact that for an animal to hibernate, it would need a reason. They do not hibernate at will, nor do they hibernate at the will of humans. The main reason why animals hibernate is because of the weather. Bears, for example, hibernate during the winter when it is extremely cold. If conditions were like this on the ocean, then many of the other animals on the ark would have died because they cannot handle these conditions. So either it was cold enough for some of the animals to hibernate, which would cause other animals to die from exposure to elements they can’t handle, or the animals were not subjected to conditions that would cause them to hibernate. Either way, this theory does not work.
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and the fact that they may well have eaten one of the pairs.
—shiloh
Animals need a lot more food than that to survive. Are you expecting me to believe that a tiger can live off one animal for an entire year?
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Although meat intake is relativly small comp. to herbavoirs and insectavoirs.
—shiloh
It depends on what animal you’re talking about. And just because the meat intake of some carnivores is smaller in comparison to herbivores and insectivores, it doesn’t mean that the meat intake is small itself. Just smaller.
Tigers, for example, generally do not eat every day. If they catch one decent sized animal, they may not eat again for several days. But if you average out their food requirements per day over a year, female tigers need about 5 to 6 kg of food per day, and males need 6 to 7 kg of food per day. This equates to over 2000 kg of food per tiger over one year.
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Don't forget dried food as weel.
—Shiloh
There are quite a few animals that will not eat dried food. Koalas, for example, will only eat
fresh eucalyptus leaves. In fact, most herbivores require fresh food. Aphids are physically incapable of sucking from wilted leaves.
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Here is one book you can read which deals with these issues. "NOAH'S ARK: A Feasibility study" by John Woodmorappe ISBN 0-932766-41-2
—shiloh
There are so many problems with Woodmarappe’s flood model, all of which I cannot list here.
Woodmorappe claims that 8 people could easily care for 16,000 animals over a year. This is impossible for several reasons, some of which are listed on the talkorigins website:
” Feeding the animals would take much longer if the food was in containers to protect it from pests.
” Many animals would have to be hand-fed.
” Watering several animals at once via troughs would not work aboard a ship. The water would be sloshed out by the ship's roll.
” Many animals, in such an artificial environment, would have required additional special care. For example, all of the hoofed animals would need to have their hooves trimmed several times during the year. [Batten, 1976, pp. 39-42]
” Not all manure could be simply pushed overboard; a third of it at least would have to be carried up at least one deck.
” Corpses of the dead animals would have to be removed regularly.
” Animals can't be expected to run laps and return to their cages without a lot of human supervision.
He claims that amphibians were not taken on the ark, and neither were invertebrates. He leaves these out because he knows they will increase the number of animals enormously. But the bible specifically states that Noah took pairs of every animal. It does not say he took pairs of each animal except for amphibians or invertebrates. It says
every animal, ”every thing that creepeth upon the earth.’
Anyway, there are several rebuttals to Woodmorappes claims including these:
Review of John Woodmorappe's "Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study"http://www.answersincreation.org/henke_kinds.htm
Also Woodmorappe makes a crucial error in his statistics. He uses he median value where he should have used the mean.
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