Biblical Reality #2 (Noah's Ark)

One day at Crave, Tony Guerrero spoke about apologetics. I loved it and found it extremely interesting. One of my favorite things he talked about was Noah's Ark. Was it possible to fit two of every animal in a boat? Here's the math and some ideas that you may not have thought about...

According to National Geographic, there are 1.75 million known species in the world.

In Genesis 6, God says that He only wants land dwelling, air breathing animals. That gives us a total of 1,200,000 animals.

Here's a break down of the 1,200,000 land dwelling, air breathing animals:

1,200,00 Total

1,038,000 = Insects

10,500 = Reptiles

4,500 = Mammals

10,00 = Birds

57,000 = Worms

We're not going to count the insects because they don't need a crazy amount of room.

That leaves us with Reptiles, Mammals, Birds, and Worms.

Our grand total is: 25,000

We need two of each:

25,000 x 2 = 50,000

Things to keep in mind:

1. An overwhelming majority of these animals are smaller than sheep. Most are about the size of a house cat.

2. We can subtract whales and dolphins because they're not land dwelling.

3. A baby elephant is a lot smaller than an adult elephant.

4. Eggs take up a lot less room than full grown animals.

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So, with that said, we have to cram 50,000 animals (which are smaller than sheep) into a big boat. Lets look at the size of the boat (I hope you're still with me):

The Ark is 300 cubits long, by 50 cubits wide, by 30 cubits high

Converted into feet, that's 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, 45 feet high

That's about 1.5 football fields long!

Do the math and you get 1,518,750 cubic feet of space.

Keep with me here!

An average railway car has 2,670 cubic feet of space.

The Ark would be able to hold 569 railway cars.

You can fit 240 sheep into one railway car.

That means you can fit 136,560 sheep into the Ark.

Remember, the Ark only requires space for 50,000 animals (most of which are smaller than sheep).

That's 86,560 more than what's needed!

Things to keep in mind:

1. There where 3 decks. So, that triples the floor space.

2. With the math we used, only 37% of the ark was used for the animals. The rest was for food and supplies.

3. The Ark has a ratio of 6:1 which was later deemed the most stable ratio for ship design by the Navy.

4. They were on the Ark for 371 days. Most animals hibernate.

So, is it mathematically possible to fit two of each land dwelling, air breathing animal on an ark that's as long as 1.5 football fields? I think it is :)