Does Jw Know How Noah Got Ried Of Animal Wast Or Munewer In The Ark

While information technology is possible that God made miraculous provisions for the daily care of these animals, it is not necessary—or required past Scripture—to appeal to miracles.

[Editor's Annotation (July 2016): Run across the latest research past AiG'due south Ark Encounter researchers on Ark animals, size, logistics, and other details at ArkEncounter.com.]

According to Scripture, Noah's ark was a condom haven for representatives of all the kinds of air-breathing land animals and birds that God created. While it is possible that God fabricated miraculous provisions for the daily care of these animals, it is not necessary—or required by Scripture—to appeal to miracles. Exploring natural solutions for day-to-24-hour interval operations does non discount God'south role: the biblical account hints at plenty of miracles as written, such as God bringing the animals to the ark (Genesis 6:20; 7:ix, 15), closing the door of the ark (Genesis 7:16), and causing the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven to open up on the same twenty-four hour period (Genesis 7:11). Information technology turns out that a study of existing, low-tech animal intendance methods answers petty objections to the ark. In fact, many solutions to seemingly insurmountable bug are rather straightforward.1

How Did Noah Fit All the Animals on the Ark?

Was every species on the ark? No!

To answer this question, nosotros must first ask how many animals were actually on the ark. Critics accept fantasized the presence of millions of animals overloading the ark. In actuality, the Bible makes it clear that the cargo was limited to land-dwelling, air-breathing vertebrate animals—corresponding to modern birds, mammals, and reptiles, as well as their extinct counterparts.

Was every species on the ark? No! From chapters such equally Leviticus 11, it is obvious that the created kind (min in Hebrew, in Genesis one:eleven–12, 21, 24–25) was a much broader category than the modern term of nomenclature, species. Electric current baraminological2 inquiry suggests that the created kind most closely corresponded to the family level in current taxonomy. However, to be conservative in this written report, the genus was set as equivalent to the original created kind. As for the make clean animals that entered the ark in 7 pairs, this added a modest number of boosted animals, notably bovids (cow-like mammals) and cervids (deer-like mammals). Under these conservative assumptions, there were no more than than xvi,000 state animals and birds on the ark.

According to the Bible, the ark had iii decks (floors). It is not difficult to show that at that place was plenty of room for 16,000 animals, assuming they required approximately the aforementioned flooring space as animals in typical farm enclosures and laboratories today. The vast bulk of the creatures (birds, reptiles, and mammals) are small. The largest animals were probably only a few hundred pounds of torso weight.

It is however necessary to take account of the floor spaces required past large animals, such equally elephants, giraffes, rhinos, and some dinosaurs. Merely even these, collectively, do not crave a large area. God would likely accept sent to Noah immature (and therefore small, but not newborn) representatives of these kinds so that they would have a full reproductive potential for life afterwards the Flood to repopulate the earth (Genesis 7:ane–3). Even the largest dinosaurs were relatively small when only a few years old.

Without tiering of cages, only 47 percentage of the ark floor would have been necessary. What'due south more than, many could have been housed in groups, which would have further reduced the required space.

What about the provisions for the animals? It can be shown that the food would have filled only six to 12 percent of the volume of the ark, and the beverage water merely an additional nine percentage of the same.3

What About the Dinosaurs?

At that place are only several hundred genera of dinosaurs known. What's more, the continuous invalidation of old names largely offsets the continuous discovery of new kinds of dinosaur genera.4 Only a modest fraction of all dinosaurs reached giant size. About 16 percent of dinosaur genera had an adult weight in excess of 10 tons, and almost half of dinosaur genera weighed no more than a ton when mature.

Withal, the foregoing is academic because dinosaurs could have been represented equally young. Interestingly, according to the virtually recent models of dinosaur maturation, fifty-fifty the largest sauropod dinosaurs were no more than than several hundred kilograms in weight by the time they were simply over a year old,5 which could accept corresponded to their time of release from the ark.

What Did the Dinosaurs Eat?

Dinosaurs could have eaten basically the same foods equally the other animals. The young representatives of the large sauropods could have eaten compressed hay, other dried institute cloth, seeds and grains, and the like. Carnivorous dinosaurs—if any were meat-eaters earlier the Flood—could have eaten stale meat, reconstituted stale meat, or slaughtered animals. Behemothic tortoises would have been ideal to utilize as nutrient in this regard. They were large and needed niggling food to be maintained themselves. There are likewise exotic sources of meat, such as fish that wrap themselves in dry out cocoons.

Figure 1. This is a cross-section view of a possible blueprint of the interior of the ark. The proposed skylight roof could be opened. This might be the covering when "Noah removed the covering of the ark" (Genesis 8:13).

How Were the Animals Cared For?

Anti-Bible critics have compared the challenges of caring for the animals with that of modern zoos. This is beguiling. Nosotros must distinguish between the long-term care required for animals kept in zoos and the temporary, emergency intendance required on the ark. The animals' condolement and healthy appearance were non essential for emergency survival during one stressful year, where survival was the primary goal.

Studies of non-mechanized animal care indicate that eight people could have fed and watered 16,000 creatures. The central is to avoid unnecessary walking around. As the old adage says, "Don't piece of work harder, work smarter."

Therefore, Noah probably stored the food and h2o near each animal. Fifty-fifty meliorate, drinking water could have been piped into troughs, but equally the Chinese have used bamboo pipes for this purpose for thousands of years. The use of some sort of self-feeders, equally is commonly washed for birds, would have been relatively easy and probably essential. Animals that required special care or diets were uncommon and should not have needed an inordinate amount of fourth dimension from the handlers. Even animals with the most specialized diets in nature could have been switched to readily sustainable substitute diets. Of course, this assumes that animals with specialized diets today were also specialized at the fourth dimension of the Flood. But that may not accept been the case in the ancestral kinds that were taken on the ark.

Figures 2 and iii. With Noah being over 500 years in age, it would brand sense that he had the knowledge to be able to incorporate automatic feeding and watering systems where they only had to be refilled occasionally.

Animals with Special Diets

Many challenges to the reliability of the biblical account of Noah's ark, based on animals' feeding requirements, are steeped in mythology. Practice convict anteaters necessarily require ants? No! Neither do most insect-eating animals require insects in their diet. Nor do most animals that consume only live prey in nature necessarily crave moving prey in captivity. (For the few that practice, it would not have been difficult to provide a rudimentary live-animal feeder.)

Even the about "fussy" animal kinds today contain private representatives that can depart from the foods their kind unremarkably eats in nature. For example, although well-nigh koalas eat aught but fresh eucalyptus leaves, there are private koalas that will subsist on dried eucalyptus leaves. Likewise, some private pandas will accept dried bamboo stalks.

How Did the Animals Breathe?

The ventilation of the ark was not just necessary to provide fresh air but, more of import, to misemploy body heat. A basic, not-mechanical ventilation system was sufficient for the ark. The density of animals on the ark, compared to the book of enclosed space, was much less than we notice in some modernistic, mass animal housing used to keep stock that are raised for food (such as chicken farms), which often require no special mechanical ventilation.

The Bible is not specific as to the kind and size of window on the ark. It is reasonable to believe that i relatively small window would accept adequately ventilated the ark. Of grade, if in that location were a window running along the top center section, which the biblical clarification allows, all occupants would be fifty-fifty more comfy. It is also interesting to notation that the convective motion of air, driven past temperature differences between the warm-blooded animals and the cold interior surfaces, would have been pregnant enough to drive the catamenia of air. Plus, wind blowing into the window would accept enhanced the ventilation further. Notwithstanding, if supplementary ventilation was necessary, it could have been provided by wave move or even a small number of animals harnessed to boring-moving rotary fans.

What Did Noah and His Family Exercise with the Animal Waste?

Figure iv. Animate being enclosures with sloped, self-cleaning floors, elimination into a manure gutter or pit.

As much every bit 12 U.S. tons (11 m. tons) of fauna waste may accept been produced daily. The primal to keeping the enclosures clean was to avoid the need for Noah and his family to do the work. The right systems could too prevent the demand to change animal bedding. Noah could have accomplished this in several means. One possibility would be to allow the waste matter to accumulate below the animals, much every bit we see in rustic henhouses. In this regard, at that place could have been slatted floors, and animals could have trampled their waste into the pits below. Small animals, such every bit birds, could accept multiple levels in their enclosures, and waste could have merely accumulated at the bottom of each.

The danger of toxic or explosive manure gases, such as methane, would exist alleviated by the constant movement of the ark, which would have immune manure gases to be constantly released. Second, methane, which is one-half the density of air, would speedily find its mode out of the window of the ark. There is no reason to believe that the levels of these gases within the ark would have remotely approached hazardous levels.

Alternatively, sloped floors in animal enclosures would have allowed the waste material to flow into big central gutters and and then into collection pits, assuasive gravity to do most of the work. Noah'southward family could accept and then dumped this overboard without an excessive expenditure of manpower.

The problem of manure odor may, at starting time thought, seem insurmountable. But we must call back that throughout well-nigh of human history, humans lived together with their farm animals. Barns, separate from human living quarters, are a relatively contempo evolution.

While the voyage of the ark may not have been comfortable or piece of cake, it was certainly doable, even under such unprecedented circumstances.

Figures 5 and vi. Some floors could allow waste to autumn beneath and could be stocked with hay or sawdust to soak it upwards. It is possible that a make clean-up would not even be required for the elapsing of the twelvemonth-long Flood.

Did the Animals Hibernate?

If animals hibernated, this would, of course, have profoundly alleviated the need to feed, water, and remove the waste of the ark animals. Critics point out that the vast bulk of animals on the ark were non of the type that hide. Nonetheless, this ignores the possibility that hibernation (or its equivalent in tropical environments, such as aestivation) may have been much more widespread in the animal kingdom than it is today.

Information technology is, of course, likewise possible that God put the animals into a sleep for most of the time that they were on the ark. But all this is moot. Whether supernatural or natural, hibernation was not necessary for the animals to have been adequately cared for on the ark. It merely would have made it easier.

Were Single Pairs Sufficient?

Critics bespeak to the fact that, when a single pair of animals is released, information technology usually does not lead to a lasting population. Merely this ignores the fact that, nether modern weather, the released pair must compete confronting pre-existing animals, causing it to usually lose out. In contrast, the ark-released animals were introduced to an environment free of competitors. Experience has shown that unmarried-pair introductions usually do lead to lasting populations when in that location are few or no competitors. One must likewise keep in mind that nowhere in the Bible does it claim that all animals that were released from the ark gave rising to lasting populations. There have been and proceed to be extinctions, often caused past man.

Critics accept also argued that unmarried pairs are not sufficient to be able to transmit the genetic variability of the parent, pre-Flood population. This is a half-truth. In most traits, a single pair contains the almost-commonly occurring gene forms (that is, alleles) that occur in the population at large. The rare alleles, which a unmarried pair will seldom take, are usually uncommon in the population and of little or no relevance to its survivorship or fitness. Mutations in the mail-Flood world could take created a new set of rarely occurring alleles.

Consider, for instance, the human blood types. The relevant possibilities are: A-only, B-just, both A and B (that is, blood type AB), and neither A nor B (that is, blood blazon O). There are also rare blood types, but these, again, are only that—rare, and of picayune relevance to human survival. They are one-step mutational derivatives of the common blood types. A single pair of individuals would very likely take the A and B alleles represented inside it. Rare blood types would be re-established by mutations of the common alleles later the Flood, and would probably not be the same as their pre-Flood counterparts.

Didn't the Ark-released Animals Eat Each Other?

Those who attack the Bible say that the carnivores released from the ark would accept soon eaten up the herbivores, leading to the eventual extinction of both. This falsely assumes that the only sources of meat bachelor to the ark-released carnivores were the ark-released herbivores. Such was not the example.

The postal service-Alluvion world must take had plenty of rotting corpses of various animals that were not buried in the Flood sediments. Feel has shown that most carnivores prefer to consume feces than to kill alive animals for food. Likewise, the Overflowing must have left behind many residual pools of water and marine life. As these waters retreated or stale up, fish and other marine animals were stranded in lakes, ponds, and streams on land. This could likewise have served as nutrient for the ark-released carnivores. In fact, experience shows that many commonly not–fish-eating carnivores, such as lions, will eat fish if information technology is available, and do and then in preference to hunting their usual casualty.

These culling sources of nutrient must take diverted the attention of predators for a considerable menses of time after the Overflowing. This would take immune the prey populations to build upwards to an appreciable size before they became the main target of the predators.

How Did Marine Life Survive?

What about the animals that were not on the ark? Critics accept said that the Inundation must have been and so destructive that aught could possibly accept survived. How could they maybe know this? Equally a matter of fact, fish and other marine life produce an astonishing number of larval offspring. Only a tiny number of these need to survive in order to propagate their kind. And while much of the Flood waters may have been tearing, many lateral and vertical parts of the water column would accept allowed sea life to survive during the Flood.

How Could Freshwater and Saltwater Fish Coexist in the Alluvion?

Near saltwater fish cannot alive in freshwater, and most freshwater fish cannot live in saltwater. So how could both have survived the Inundation? To begin with, the intolerances are not symmetrical in nature. Most ocean fish can survive considerable reductions in the salinity of h2o, even though they cannot go all the way to the most-zilch salinity of fresh h2o. In contrast, nigh freshwater life is intolerant of more than than a slight elevation of salt levels in the water.

In that location is a range of brackish h2o (nearly 5–10 percent the salinity of current ocean water) that would be tolerated by nearly all sea fish as well equally a meaning fraction of freshwater fish. What about those organisms that cannot tolerate this? Variations in salinity co-ordinate to geographic area, and the probable stratification of denser, saltier water, would have created pockets of considerable salinity and other pockets that approached freshwater qualities. Sensitive organisms could survive there.

Finally, it should be noted that organisms that are extremely intolerant of either salinity or reductions in salinity vary from species to species. The narrow range that they tolerate probably arose since the Alluvion by the mechanisms of natural selection of some of the slap-up genetic variability built into the original created kinds (and still observable today) and in some cases through mutations too. In fact, at that place is evidence from selective breeding that tolerance or intolerance to salinity can be markedly changed in a matter of generations.

Source: https://answersingenesis.org/noahs-ark/how-could-noah-fit-the-animals-on-the-ark-and-care-for-them/

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