How did Noah fit all those animals in the Ark?

Cranky Old Fart has been kind enough to get into the discussion concerning evolution versus creation. This post caused us to begin a dialogue and he has asked this question: "...how about that boat with the millions of species on board?"

The Bible states that Noah took birds, animals and creeping things in Genesis 6:20. Now we know that the Bible was not written in English and like most languages translations can change or hide meanings. The best use of the words for animal is "behemah" which implies a land-dwelling vertebrate. The word for creeping thing is "remes" which likely refers to reptiles/dinosaurs, etc. A great AIG article goes over this thoroughly. There was no call to take in invertebrates, nor insects (which don't breath through the nose and mouth) nor germs nor any water-dwelling creatures nor plants. In Genesis 7:22 it is stated that all that breathed through nostrils and were left on dry land died. The basic plan to bring animals on the ark was, if it breathes through the nose a representative goes. If it breathes through the skin(shell, etc) for itself it must fend.

Going back a bit, we also know that Genesis 1:24 tells us that God organized his creatures according to "kind" and animals of a kind would be able to mate and reproduce. Our designations of species and genus are not found in the Bible. God could call into the Ark a set of animals that had the coding in their genes to produce several species of animal. Perhaps Aurochs was the representative for all cattle kinds. Perhaps a dog pair held the genes for all dogs, wolves and so on. We have seen breeders bring out hundreds of varieties of dogs and we know they all came from one common ancestor dog.

Genesis 7:9 indicates that God brought the animals into the Ark. He was in charge of determining the Ark gene pool.

Quoting from the AIG site: "(John)Woodmorappe tallied up about 8,000 genera, including extinct genera. Thus about 16,000 individual animals had to be aboard. With extinct genera, there is a tendency among some paleontologists to give each of their new finds a new genus name. But this is arbitrary, so the number of extinct genera is probably highly overstated.

Consider the sauropods, which were the largest dinosaurs—the huge plant-eaters like Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, etc. There are 87 sauropod genera commonly cited, but only 12 are ‘firmly established’ and another 12 are considered ‘fairly well established.’"


John Woodmorappe has some detailed explanations for how the Ark could easily hold the animals required to repopulate the earth. In his book "Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study" he explains in detail the necessary animals could fit into less than half of the Ark's capacity, leaving plenty of room for food, and that the eight people on the Ark were more than enough of a crew to take care of feeding, watering and waste removal.

The article in AIG states: "The ark measured 300x50x30 cubits (Gen. 6:15) which is about 137x23x13.7 meters or 450x75x45 feet, so its volume was 43,200 m3 (cubic meters) or 1.52 million cubic feet. To put this in perspective, this is the equivalent volume of 522 standard railroad stock cars, each of which can hold 240 sheep.

If the animals were kept in cages with an average size (some would be much bigger, others smaller) of 50x50x30 centimeters (20x20x12 inches), that is 75,000 cm3 (cubic centimeters) or 4,800 cubic inches, the 16,000 animals would only occupy 1,200 m3 (42,000 cubic feet) or 14.4 stock cars. Even if a million insect species had to be on board as well, it would not be a problem, because they require little space. If each pair was kept in cages of 10 cm (four inches) per side, or 1,000 cm3, all the insect species would occupy a total volume of only 1,000 m3, or another 12 cars. This would leave room for five trains of 99 cars each for food, Noah’s family and ‘range’ for the animals, and air space. However, insects are not included in the meaning of behemah or remes, so Noah probably did not have to take them on board as passengers anyway."


Many of the animals, if not most, could have come to the Ark at an early and smaller age. God could have used hibernation to keep the animals still most of the time and made it easier on the human crew.

Plants could survive the flood through seeds and clumps of floating matter. Those clumps would provide shelter for smaller creatures such as invertebrates and insects, creatures that were not taken aboard the Ark. Of course, many kinds of these creatures could be wiped out and many kinds of water-dwelling creatures as well.

Certainly the Flood wiped out many varieties of flora and fauna that God did not choose to save, and many more have gone extinct in the time since the Ark returned to dry land. But the evidence shows that the ancestors of all living behemah and remes could have easily fit into the Ark and have been sustained for the year-long voyage until such time as Noah and the animals were released.