Noah's Ark

Under Construction

Noah's ark:
Could all those animals fit?
In "Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study", by John Woodmorappe, 1996, he says:
"They would fit in about 90% of the space"
Taking one pair from each genera he comes up with 7428 mammals, 4602 birds and 3724 reptiles on the ark. This totals to 15,754 animals on the ark. Amphibians and invertebrates like terrestrial snails are not on the ark.

Doctors Morris and Whitcomb in their book, The Genesis Flood, estimate that approximately 35,000 animals were placed on board the ark.

Better numbers are:
Plants: 270,000 species
Animals: > 6 Million species.
But, wait, this is not a problem. The fish can stay in the ocean (forgetting the salt water vs fresh for the moment) and insects and birds can fly/crawl around the walls of the ark.

Animals which take up floor space:

Mammals 5.4K

Reptiles 6.8K

Frogs, toads, ... 4.3K

sub-total 16.5 K

Others:

birds 9K (can fly around and live on mammals backs)

fish 22K (can stay in the ocean)

worms, centipedes, .. 50K (can live in dirt on the floor)

Insects > 1 M (can live on animals backs, walls etc)

Spiders, ticks, mites 75K can live on floors, walls, ...

The plants are probably a bigger question, but if you assume Noah just took seeds that might work. However, some insects require certain species of live plants and what about food for the herbivores? I'm not a botanist so don't know what the technical problems would be with this. See taxonomy.
Two of each plus 5 of each clean animal [Gen 7:2] gives about 75,000 mammals and reptiles (not counting birds because they can perch on the rafters and other animals backs)].

Noah's Ark [300 cubits long (450 feet), 50 cubits at the beam, (75 feet) and 30 cubits (45 feet) high] and had 3 decks would provide 101,250 sq ft of deck spaced, that's 1.4 sq ft per animal.
Possible but tight if he had young, not fully grown, samples of each.]

At BibleStudy.org they compare the size of the ark to railroad stock cars and claim you can get 240 sheep on a stock car. This assumes that it is a double deck stock car, but then their floor space comparison is wrong. A stock car is about 10x40 ft, so the ark is the equivalent of 125 double deck cars or 250 single deck cars. The average stock car can carry 80 180 lb. sheep up to 160 50 lb. sheep per deck (2.5 - 5 sq ft per animal), so the ark could carry 20-40,000 sheep size animals packed in like sheep for a short period of time. (see hosam.com)

Some say: "The affect of small inbreeding population as animals dispersed after the Flood makes it easier for mutations to take hold and will greatly accelerating substitution rates."
However most people who believe in the literal interpretation of the flood do not believe in evolution.
See Talk.origins archive a CreationWiki.org.

Could the Noah's Ark [300 cubits long (450 feet), 50 cubits at the beam, (75 feet) and 30 cubits (45 feet) high] [Genesis 6] be built of that period and would it have structural integrity and sea worthiness, to survive?