How many noahs ark

Jewish tradition says that a hundred and twenty years before the Flood, Noah specially planted the trees from which he would take the wood for the Ark—no old-growth logging here! Aware of the massive resources that his project would demand, Noah actively worked to be as self-sustaining as possible. Sefer Hayashar written as early as the 9th century , states that it took just five years for Noah to build the ark.

This source states that it took 52 years for Noah to build the ark, with Divine guidance. God gave Noah clear instructions on building the ark. It was to comprise three stories: the top for Noah and his family; the middle for the animals; and the bottom for refuse. It was to measure cubits in length, 50 cubits in width, and 30 in height.

The ark was illuminated by a tzohar, which was either a window through which light shone from the outside, or a radiant precious stone. The amount may have come to tons of manure during the year on the Ark, according to San Diego Zoo researchers. Whether Noah and his family systematically removed manure from the Ark and dumped it in the water , or stored some or all in a designated waste area, Noah toiled to maintain the cleanliness of the Ark.

A good rule of thumb is that if two things can breed together, then they are of the same created kind. There can be a tremendous amount of variation within a created kind. For example, various types of dogs, such as wolves, dingoes, coyotes, jackals, and domestic dogs, can often breed with one another.

When dogs breed together, you get dogs; so there is a dog kind. This clearly excludes fish and other sea creatures, and it probably excludes the insects and other invertebrates. Recent studies estimate the total number of living and extinct kinds of land animals and flying creatures to be about 1, According to The Bible, God instructed Noah to build a boat which was cubits long 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high — recommending gopher wood for the enormous lifeboat.

The students averaged out the Egyptian and Hebrew cubit measurement to come up with Using the dimensions, the Archimedes principal of buoyancy and approximate animal wrights they were astonished to find out that the Ark would have floated. Previous research has suggested that there were approximately 35, species of animals which would have needed to be saved by Noah, enabling the students to conclude that the dimensions given in the Bible would have allowed Noah to build an ark that would float with all of the animals on board.

The students had to swap gopher wood for cypress wood, as Biblical experts continue to speculate as to what gopher wood might be. Some think it may just mean plained timber.

And their cities wouldn't have been buried any deeper than the ocean floor dwellers whose fossils are exposed abundantly. With Nelson, we are forced once again to the deus ex machina: "It was God's deliberate purpose to leave no vestige of prediluvian man remaining" p. The flood not only destroyed wicked humanity. All of the innocent creatures on earth suffered and died in this God-ordained cataclysm Genesis Whitcomb and Morris reveal that "sub-human creatures" which have been used as instruments of sin are punished p.

But surely every animal on earth, many of which had never even seen a human, didn't deserve to be summarily drowned. What cruel hand of fate selected the two of each species to board the ark, leaving all the others behind without hope? These issues are beyond the scope of this article, but we merely mention them to indicate some of the many additional quandaries a literal acceptance of the flood story entails.

We have alluded to the immensity of the deluge already, but to really appreciate it we should savor some of the remarks of the experts:. The Flood was accompanied by violent movements of the earth's crust and by volcanic activity of momentous proportions. Tremendous tidal waves and rushing currents scoured and deeply eroded the continental surface. Entire forests were ripped up and transported large distances to be dumped where the currents slowed.

Kofahl and Segraves, p. Even after the first forty days, when the greatest of the rains and upheavals diminished, the Scriptures say that the waters "prevailed" upon the earth for one hundred and ten days longer. This statement. The only way in which land could now appear again would be for a tremendous orogeny to take place. Mountains must arise and new basins must form to receive the great overburden of water imposed upon the earth.

Yielding of the crust at even one point, with resultant escape of magmas and water or steam, would then lead to earth movements causing further fractures until, as the Scriptures portray so graphically, "the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up" Genesis Truly this was a gigantic catastrophe, beside which the explosion of the largest hydrogen bomb, or of hundreds of such bombs, becomes insignificant!

The worldwide ocean of the Genesis flood was swept by wind storms that would make modern tornadoes seem like a zephyr. Schmich, p. There are perhaps five hundred active volcanoes in the world, and possibly three times that many extinct volcanoes.

But nothing ever seen by man in the present era can compare with whatever the phenomena were which caused the formation of these tremendous structures.

Whitcomb, , p. For once we can agree that creationist rhetoric has not been exaggerated. A cataclysm that could accomplish the largest percentage of the geological activity in earth's history in one year—events that uniformitarians assign to billions of years—would be so overwhelming that we cannot begin to imagine what it would be like.

Yet into the jaws of destruction sailed a rickety wooden boat—oversized, leaky and unsound, carrying a cargo whose safety and protection was all important! It is utterly inconceivable that it could have survived even a few days of this maelstrom without being blasted to splinters—unless it was protected by the unceasing intervention of the deity. Curiously, when the talk turns to the fate of the ark, diluviologists suddenly paint a much rosier picture.

Whitcomb, for example, has read that tsunamis so-called tidal waves in the open sea are of such low amplitude as to be hardly noticeable and would "thus have had very little effect on Noah's Ark" , p. But why mention these and omit wind-driven waves, which have been known to exceed one hundred feet in an ordinary hurricane? The winds that would make tornadoes "seem like a zephyr," blowing over the unlimited, unobstructed fetch of the entire globe, would have generated waves many times higher; arkeologist Meyer suggests a height of several miles p.

And what sorts of waves would be produced by the breakup of the "fountains of the great deep," the splitting of the continents, and the worldwide orogeny? The shock waves from present-day submarine earthquakes have been known to damage or destroy vessels far from land Thrower, pp.

Furthermore, there were at least two occasions when the ark was not in the open sea. As she sat on the Plains of Shinar, her first encounter with the deluge would most likely have been a mountainous tidal wave or flash flood or both, smashing her to pieces just as easily as it uprooted "entire forests. Ararat and battered a few more days by the violently receding waters.

There were other hazards as well. Volcanic ash and molten boulders filled the air, while at least in the early stages of the storm vegetation rafts and the debris of civilization shot through the water like torpedoes.

For most of the time, the ark was the only object projecting above the sea's surface, and, as such, it must have been subject to a continuous barrage of lightning, producing fires, splitting beams, and electrocuting soaked animals. Then we have the puzzling currents of the flood, which flowed hither and yon, burying some places one week and uncovering them the next. For example, creationists tell us that the Llano Uplift of Texas remained a haven for men and dinosaurs while eight thousand feet of sediment was being deposited nearby John Morris, , pp.

Hence the ark should have also encountered swift-moving, riverlike currents and whirlpools, with frequent collisions against the outcrops that broke the surface. Noah neglected putting any kind of steering mechanism on the ship, leaving it completely at the mercy of the savage storm Segraves, p. In what must be a first, creationists Balsiger and Sellier actually conducted an experiment pp.

They had a scale model of the ark tested in a hydraulics lab and concluded from this that it could have withstood waves of over two hundred feet before capsizing.

But even higher seas must have been commonplace in that fateful gale, quickly sending the boat to the bottom. It's a moot issue, however, since the entire test is vitiated by overlooking the ship's excessive size, which would have rendered it unsound in any weather. Arkeologists cannot have their cake and eat it; they can't have a cataclysm of the magnitude of the biblical flood and still expect the ark to survive. Each year approximately two thousand ships succumb to the forces of the sea, in conditions that are like the horse latitudes compared to the deluge.

These include structurally sound steel freighters larger than the ark, some of which have vanished so fast in a "mere" hurricane that people have even suggested a paranormal force behind their destruction cf. Kusche, pp. Who can forget the , ton supertanker, Amoco Cadiz, which ran aground off Brittany in March and was quickly broken in two by swells that were calm compared to those lashing Mt.

Yet the ark was adrift, without rudder or sail, for days Genesis in a storm that would make "hundreds of hydrogen bombs" seem insignificant!

But mere survival is hardly the proper criterion of the voyage's success. The animals, many of them so sensitive that they have never yet been kept in zoos, had to make it through in good enough condition to reproduce and to spread over the earth.

Hirst tells us that "wild animals should be subjected to a minimum of jolting and rolling during transport. Rapid acceleration, sharp cornering, and sudden deceleration are to be avoided at all times" p. Broken legs and necks, bruises, and cuts are important considerations in even short hauls by truck, not to mention the panic most of the overcrowded creatures would experience.

Even fish in tanks are severely affected by sloshing and jolting Van den Sande. If indeed the ship avoided being reduced to toothpicks, anything on board larger than a grasshopper would have been pounded into a bloody, shapeless mass long before the last tidal wave crashed against the creaking hull. Assuming that the chaos outside could somehow be drastically reduced, what special problems did the cargo pose? According to the time periods given in Genesis and , based on the Hebrew Lunar Year of days, the inhabitants of the ark remained there days.

How did Noah and his family take care of their charges during this long stay? Our Bible-believing biologists have devised a clever mechanism for easing Noah's task: hibernation. LaHaye and Morris tell us that the ability to hibernate is an "almost universal tendency" among animals and that, faced with "adverse conditions" and "extreme stress" they would slip into this state and hence be easily manageable p. Henry Morris agrees, attributing this behavior to "divinely ordered genetic mutations," and asserts that this is the best explanation available for these abilities today , p.

This "solution" is apparently an ad hoc idea into which none of its advocates even bothered to delve. If they had, they would have found that hibernation is far from "universal. These are all small creatures; larger animals, including bears, are too big for true hibernation Mount, p. Most fish, birds, and invertebrates do not become dormant in any sense, and other forms of torpor, such as reptilian estivation, are physiologically dissimilar to winter sleep and could not occur in the same environment.

Furthermore, animals respond to "extreme stress" with panic and flight—not hibernation, which is a response to lack of food or cold temperatures. Crowded into the ark like sardines with every other species all about, tossed and slammed against their cages with the ear-splitting roar of the upheaval outside, quiet inactivity is the last thing one would expect to happen. Many animals are so nervous that they are difficult to keep in an ordinary zoo; if even true hibernators like bats are aroused by touching, what chance is there that any specimen would quietly curl up for a year-long nap?

Hibernation is not a simple siesta. Rather, "during the period prior to hibernation, an animal must make a considerable number of gradual physiological and metabolic adjustments" Mayer, p. These include an increase of fat deposition, gradual readjustment of body temperature, heart rate, and metabolism, preparation of the den and storage of food, and so on. Frogs and salamanders frequently overwinter in large aggregates; other amphibians sleep only under forest litter or in a few inches of icy water; lungfishes construct a mud cocoon.

Timing is also vital, for, if exposed to cold at the wrong time of year, a hibernator will increase its activity in order to keep warm. What opportunities did the migrating hoards have to prepare themselves and their cages for the long rest? Were the ark's spartan stalls provided with cozy dens and burrows? Newly arrived from near and far, the animals were stampeded, still exhausted from their march, into strange, frightening cells and, only a week later, were violently jolted onto their wild ride Genesis , Finally, hibernation is a risky affair, rather than the refreshing nap portrayed by creationists.

The animal loses about 40 percent of its body weight during the winter; prorated into the days on board the ark, each would have been reduced to little more than a skeleton by the time the door opened.

Even bones and teeth deteriorate, and the young frequently starve Yalden and Morris, pp. In snakes, the mortality rate may be as high as 30 to 50 percent Shaw and Campbell, p. On page , W. Mayer concludes:. The hibernator apparently is balanced on a very narrow line between the maintenance of life at a level that makes recovery from hibernation possible and a reduction of metabolism to a level that will lead to death. Evidence obtained from tissues indicates that the process of hibernation is a precarious method of survival at best and one from which many animals do not awaken.

As a mechanism of species survival, hibernation seems effective; for the survival of the individual, however, it is an uncertain and dangerous process. Yet on the ark, there were only individuals, hibernating in extremely adverse conditions for more than double the time that any animal normally is dormant. We must conclude that the animals on the ark did not experience any type of dormancy in any way resembling these phenomena in nature; the "divine mutations" produced a state closer to suspended animation, a sort of celestial cryonics Segraves, pp.

This supernatural quiescence has a curious twist, however, for the Bible plainly informs us that Noah was to take food on the voyage for the animals Genesis Hibernators do awaken from time to time to eat, and apparently these supersleepers did so also.

If the Lord was going to perform such a substantial modification of natural physiology as this impossible hibernation involved, why not make the miracle complete and dispense with the storage space for the food and the inconvenience to the crew of the feedings? This is especially pertinent when the magnitude of the task is examined. For the total number of creatures on the ark, if each one received but one feeding during the voyage, and if all eight of the crew worked sixteen hours per day at the chore, each animal would wind up with just Some would have their meal on the first day, while others waited until they were nearly starved.

The poor attendants would have to carry out their chores in the violently pitching vessel and in inky darkness since lanterns could easily drop and start a fire.

They would have to find the correct food and somehow locate the right cage in the mind-numbing maze. When they found it, they would have to arouse an animal that could sleep through the raging chaos; the food could not be left in the troughs for it would spoil or spill. Then it's back down the slippery corridor to the storage bins for the next meal—on a perfect schedule, without duplicated efforts or mistakes—all in less than a minute! Unfortunately, many animals are not physiologically capable of surviving on an occasional meal, however large, and a meal once a year—or once a week—would mean death.

Some birds eat continuously during daylight and suffer when taken to regions with short winter days National Research Council, , p. Rodents, cud chewers, and insectivores are others in the "continuous feeder" class Gersh, p. Thus it appears that the "hibernation model," cleverly concocted to relieve Noah of an unmanageable work load, is vitiated by the simple scriptural requirement of providing food for the voyage.

There are many other problems associated with the feeding. The first concerns the carnivores: where did Noah get the huge quantities of fresh meat required by these animals? The creationist response is that God miraculously altered them so that they could thrive on a vegetarian diet during the voyage.

Although some aver that the eating of meat never occurred anywhere until after the flood, Whitcomb and Morris discuss at length the change from herbivorous to carnivorous physiology, which they date to the Fall of Adam pp.

Thus these animals were originally vegetarian, then became meat-eaters after the Fall, vegetarians again for the year of the flood, finally returning to their carnivorous ways afterwards. Three times the Lord magically changed the physiology and anatomy of a substantial proportion of the animal kingdom. And if this is true of carnivorous mammals, it must also be so for insect-eating birds, amphibians, reptiles, for the multitudes that live on fresh fish and other aquatic creatures, and for arthropods which eat other invertebrates.

Were the slender, sticky tongues of tamanduas, pangolins, and other anteaters, so difficult to feed in zoos, altered to eat hay? Were vampire bats and mosquitos able to substitute tomato juice for fresh blood? Did the whales adapt to kelp instead of krill? And what of our ever-troublesome parasites? Were tapeworms and leeches content to spend a year sucking on an old log? God was remodeling digestive systems right and left! Even if everyone ate only plants, there were still enormous obstacles.

Many animals have highly specialized diets: koalas eat only certain types of Eucalyptus leaves; the giant panda eats bamboo shoots; three-toed sloths so prefer Cecropia leaves that they are almost impossible to keep in captivity. Primates need fresh fruit; many birds develop cramps and spasms if they don't get sufficient calcium; desert rodents are poisoned by excessive protein; and the list goes on cf.

Wallach and Flieg; Fiennes. How did Noah know what foods to get, how much and where to get them? How were the stores kept from rotting during the lengthy voyage?

Even hay rapidly becomes moldy and unusable. Young insists that feeding troughs be cleaned daily and uneaten food removed to prevent decay p. Giraffes and moose must have their troughs high or they can't reach them, while animals with large antlers can't get their mouths into a basket placed against a wall.

Carnivores deprived of bones to chew develop peridontal disease Bush and Gray ; rodents, too, need to gnaw or their teeth will overgrow Orlans, p. The tearing beak of eagles, the seed-cracking beak of parrots, the bill strainer of flamingos also overgrow if unused National Research Council, , p. Many animals, from fish to snakes, penguins to bats, will only eat living food because they must see it move to seize it Fiennes; Gersh.

Even praying mantises eat only live food and will eat each other if nothing else is available. Did Noah know this? Where did Noah find room for all these provisions? Even if the animals ate only a few times during the voyage, these must have been hearty meals and a lot of feed was required.

Elephants consume three hundred pounds of hay per day, hippos eighty to one hundred pounds. A large walrus eats forty pounds of fish daily, a lion sixteen pounds of meat; what would be the equivalent in grain? Whales consume several tons of krill per day when feeding Lockley, pp. Neubuser says that in the Frankfurt Zoo each year "sixty tons of horse, cattle, and whale meat are required to satisfy the demands of the carnivores.

The boxes of cereals and oil seed, each containing about a hundredweight, if put end to end, would stretch for a distance of over half a mile. The annual consumption of fruit, vegetables, roots, and green clover would fill fifty freight trains; hay and straw, thirty-five goods wagons" p. Lest these burdens start to overwhelm us, we find Rehwinkel discussing a theory that Noah possessed a "mysterious oil" of supernutrative powers—one drop of which would sustain life p.

In the creationist Land of Oz, why not? Although water was the most abundant substance around, it was muddy, salty, and full of volcanic pollutants. Even the water falling from the skies would have been useless, since the tremendous level of volcanism would have turned it to poisonous acid rain.

For his animals, Noah needed large quantities of fresh, clean water, kept in troughs and inspected frequently. Where did this come from? How was it stored and distributed? Conditions being what they were, it must have splashed out of the troughs shortly after they were filled, mixed with food and waste to form a stinking, slippery swamp all over each deck, while the reserves were rapidly choked with algae to form an undrinkable swill.

The mention of waste brings attention to that problem. All authorities on animal care insist on the cleanliness of the stalls, urging the daily removal of waste and soiled bedding. Neubuser remarks that "the removal of zoo waste presents almost insuperable difficulties" p. Creationists Balsiger and Sellier suggest that the bottom deck was used to store slurry, which accumulated to tons during the voyage. However, a single adult elephant could produce 40 tons during this time Coe , and there were many creatures even larger.

Our average animal, the sheep, produces 0. Multiplying the number of vertebrates by 0. Of course, hibernation would greatly reduce this quantity, while the invertebrates and dinosaurs would add to it. Whatever the total, it would have been an awesome amount on the overcrowded boat, a breeder of infinite numbers of pathogens, and a source of noxious, choking fumes.

A comparison with Lamoureux's Guide to Ship Sanitation is instructive. Complex plumbing systems of pipes and pumps, air-gaps and back-flow valves, filters and chemical treatments are necessary to provide potable water and dispose of sewage. Waste is treated and dumped overboard, not discharged to the bilge as on the ark. Such technology was clearly beyond Noah's ability and the maintenance capabilities of his tiny crew; yet, if ever it was needed on a voyage, this was it.

Heinz Hediger of Zurich Zoo, introducing us to a host of additional headaches with which Noah would have to deal. Many animals would not survive long in barren stalls but would need to have elements of their natural environment present.

Squirrels and sloths need trees to climb; the latter are almost helpless on the ground. Armadillos, viscachas, and others require soil in which they can scrape and burrow; capybaras and tapirs must have pools of water for bathing; and otters require running water. The extremely delicate platypus would have to be maintained with a device consisting of a water tank, a nest, and tunnels with rubber gaskets to squeeze water out of the platypus's fur to prevent the nest getting wet and the animal developing pneumonia.

Ungulates in transport should be made to stand up hourly to revive circulation in their limbs. Elephants and hippos develop dermatitis unless they can bathe frequently cf. Crandall; Hirst; Neubuser. Wading birds develop leg weakness and should be transported in special stockings; peacocks and long-tailed pheasants may need their tails splinted and wrapped in bandages.

Woodpeckers' cages would need a special coating, and many other animals, from termites to rodents, would gnaw through a normal stall. Excessive moisture is "extremely deleterious" to most reptiles Kaufield , while low humidities would prove fatal to many amphibians. Burrowing invertebrates, such as worms, crabs, and clams, will perish without proper substrate.

Perhaps the greatest difficulties arise with marine organisms. Most of them are extremely sensitive to slight changes in temperature, salinity, pH value, and other factors, and their aquaria require constant monitoring.

Many need large, round tanks to prevent them from knocking against the sides, and some tanks must have a polyurethane foam to guard against injury from rubbing. Complex filtering systems—unavailable on the ark—are necessary to remove waste; most fish require a high degree of cleanliness. Hadal dwellers must be kept in special high-pressure tanks cf. Backhaus; Hawkins. Of course, a system of active aeration is necessary or the fish will suffocate—yet a fragile jellyfish can be damaged by an oxygen bubbler.

Some sharks will sustain tissue damage from lying still as little as five minutes and may have to be stimulated by an attendant when in a captive environment Gruber and Keyes, p.