People often wonder how all of the animals could have fit on the ark. Often, “bathtub arks” are loaded down with various species of animals, rather than the biblical kind, which is approximately at the family level of biological classification. Noah didn’t need to bring lions, leopards, and tigers onto the ark, just a single pair from the cat kind. We see so many illustrations of large creatures packed tightly into a little boat. But this image is inaccurate too. Noah’s ark was so much larger than it is usually depicted, and many of the animals were probably smaller than are shown in popular pictures.
But the biggest hurdle people have when they see any of our displays of the ark (or visit the Ark Encounter) is seeing dinosaurs depicted on the ark (or in stalls in the Ark Encounter). Due to evolutionary indoctrination, many people can’t picture man living alongside dinosaurs, or if they do, they think of the Jurassic Park/World movies and view all dinosaurs as wanting to trample or eat people. Even if they overcome or set aside this stumbling block, we still get questions of how dinosaurs could even fit on the ark, particularly when considering the massive dinosaurs, especially the sauropods. Other oft-cited “problems” with dinosaurs on the ark are feeding the herbivores the massive amounts of vegetation that the adults eat, feeding the carnivorous ones (and avoiding being eaten by them), and cleaning up after them.
It makes more sense to think that God would have sent to Noah juveniles (or sub-adults) or smaller varieties within the same kind. Consider the following advantages to bringing juveniles or smaller versions of a creature: they take up less space, they eat less, they create less waste, they are often more docile and easier to manage, they are generally less susceptible to injury, and they would have more time to reproduce after the flood. And considering this last point, wasn’t that the end goal of bringing them on board the ark: to keep them alive and to ensure that they would “be fruitful and multiply on the earth” (Genesis 8:17)? Bringing a full-sized dinosaur that only had a few years left and/or was past its reproductive prime seems illogical and wasteful. Neither of those is characteristic of God.
Regarding carnivorous activity, we know from the fossil record (most of which is a testimony of the worldwide, globe-covering flood) that some animals were carnivores in the post-fall/pre-flood world. But even if carnivory was prevalent in the late pre-flood world, it is still possible the animals that God sent did not eat meat or were omnivores that could have survived for one year without meat. There have been modern examples of animals normally considered to be carnivores that refused to eat meat, such as the lion known as Little Tyke. Additionally during times of war or natural disaster when meat was unobtainable, zoos and wildlife parks have utilized meat substitutes1 like nuts, peanut butter, coconuts, beans, soy, and other legumes as their protein-source feed for the animals.2
However, if some of the ark’s animals did eat meat, there are several methods of preserving or supplying their food. Meat can be preserved through drying, smoking, salting, or pickling. Certain fish can pack themselves in mud and survive for years without water—these could have been stored on the ark. Noah may have also brought mealworms and other insects onto the ark as food, and these can be bred for both carnivores and insectivores, providing even necessary amino acids, like taurine. Cricket or grasshopper flour could be baked into breads, as could the ground seeds of gourds. And plants like amaranth and quinoa yield high protein feed. Yeast paste and dried seaweed also contain high amounts of protein and taurine, so Noah quite likely had many options available to him. And occasionally in desperate times, like during the Nazi siege of Leningrad in 1941, even obligate carnivores (in this case, a tiger) have switched to vegetarian diets and survived for several years.
For the plant-eating dinosaurs, the animals brought on board could have eaten compressed hay, other dried grasses, dried vegetables, seeds and grains, legumes, etc. Another factor that may have reduced food consumption for both vegetarian and carnivorous dinosaurs is that they went into a state of hibernation/brumation or torpor. Many reptiles today begin to eat less, reduce their metabolic rate drastically, and then “sleep” for long periods of time when the weather gets a little cooler, virtually eating nothing and waking up only for brief periods to drink before reentering brumation. Often the best conditions for this state are humidity, temperatures between 50° and 68° F (10° and 20° C), and low-light conditions. The outside weather at the time of the flood (rainy and thus likely cool) combined with the lower-light interior compartments of the ark would make ideal hibernation/brumation conditions on the ark. If any of the dinosaurs and other reptiles and amphibians went into brumation, then food requirements would have been severely reduced.
— Troy Lacey, Answers in Genesis, Dinosaurs on the Ark: How It Was Possible, April 28, 2021
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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AIG is a whole different level of willful dumbness. It’s like they WORK to be stupid. Having been to the Creation Museum when it first opened, I almost had to admire their tenacious efforts at trying to shoehorn biblical literalism into a science-y sounding framework… while also slipping in some amazing overt racism in a few of their displays. Go big or stay home, I guess.
Did YHWH leave time for Noah to bake cricket bread, harvest seaweed and grind yeast to paste??
I’ve read that logistically, it would’ve been impossible to have even the number of animals creationists say were on the Ark. The necessity for fresh water, the need of animals to evacuate, and then of course, what would they eat and where would it be stored? But that is probably when they proclaim you need faith to figure out their god’s miracle. sigh
Freshwater is an issue off the ark, too! There’s no way brine shrimp (Artemia salina), for instance, could possibly have survived the flood. They’re restricted to lakes because the ocean isn’t salty enough for them.
I wonder where they stored all the viruses? Where has Covid-19 been kept all this time and has one of Noah’s descendants been keeping it in a glass jar, just waiting to release it on an unsuspecting world?
This is why they have such a hard time understanding environmental sciences. Everything is out of context. If their “god” gave these to Noah, how about putting Noah’s family in a row boat. Pull the plug on the Flood. Then let their “god” place them on Earth once again. What’s the big need for a big boat ?!? Their “god” is supposed to be a magic god, right ?!? I’m waiting to hear Noah discovering atomic physics and deep freeze suspended animation. What next ?!? Flying saucers from hell?!? Time travelling dinosaurs ?!? This guy simply cannot write a descent fairytale. His book would simply have been rejected by most publishers. No believable plot. He needs to go back to writing school to understand the meaning of how important a well thought out plot is to any story. This isn’t even on the level of Hairy Potter yet.
REJECT ! REJECT! REJECT! REJECT!
The Noah story is a parable containing assorted spiritual messages. It is not a recordation of history. Human beings and dinosaurs did not live together at the same time and play together. Dinosaurs would have been great sources of protein. Can you say “tastes like chicken”? To the best of my knowledge, no dinosaur bones with archaeologically distinct human butchering marks on them have ever been found on any archaeological site in the United States.
Christians just can’t figure out what parts of their bible are literal, metaphor, or just to be ignored because they are inconvenient.
NOthing like seeing first hand how religion is just bullshit made up by humans. Nothing “spiritual” or magic at all.
AIG’s willful ignorance and stupidity makes my head hurt.
This faireytale eases the pain.
Charles–When in doubt, everything tastes like chicken! Not fried, though.
As for the Ark: It’s hard enough for ten people to live in a two-bedroom apartment, even when they’re not in a COVID lockdown. So I have a really difficult time imagining how two of every living species could fit into a boat–that ended up perched on top of a mountain when the waters receded.
I may not know much science, but I know enough not to look for it in the Bible!
The pretend science drives me nuts. It is intellectual abuse to expose young minds to such willfully self-crippled thinking. And – as I think I’ve said before – if you look at fast enough breeding species you can actually watch evolution happening. Right in front of your eyes. Not believing in it is like not believing in the sky.
Three-spined sticklebacks are adorable little fish, famous throughout the world for their rapid morphological changes when separated from other populations. They’re among the best examples of an animal we can see evolving before our eyes.
The coronavirus is an even clearer example of rapid evolution.
A big problem is the tons of sh*t they produce. But that’s Answers In Genesis for ya.
If you buy into original sin you have to have dinosaurs living with humans. So many hoops to jump through
ah, creationist lies for Christ. It’s so cute to watch them ignore their god and lie and lie and lie.
It’s also great fun since they admit that faith is not enough at all for them. So much for the christian lie that this god remains “hidden” because it needs christains to believe blindly.
contradictions, tsk.
Something interesting about the book of Genesis, or at least the part that is distinctively a set of tall tales, it is actually the most digestible part of the entire Bible. Perhaps this is why Ken Ham is so drawn to it? There are 4 memorable tales, the creation, Adam and Eve, the flood, and the tower of Babel. I’m curious why tall tales are so entertaining? Similar to a cartoon which simplifies and exaggerates (perceived) reality while omitting the mundane, it is especially something a child might like along with a certain innocence and lack of cynicism that the full wonder can impress.
While it might be entertaining story telling, to take them seriously and try to explain tall tales with a dash of science like Ken Ham does here? Despicable.
Far be it from me to argue logic and science with creationists, because it is futile, but brumation happens in cold blooded reptiles, and dinosaurs are thought to be warm blooded. I know it’s hard to keep up when you try to force science into strict bible reading, but they should try.
This whole effort to use science to prove the Bible, but warp science and ignore logic to make it fit, is amazingly stupid. It’s just much easier to say the stories may not be accurate, or explanations of events as understood by ancient cultures. After all, the Jesus story really doesn’t need the ark. And none of these stories are really required for god to exist.
Well, at least we took the rainbow back and updated it to have a modern meaning. 🌈🌈🌈🌈
Yes! At least we have the rainbow!
I have heard it said by some fundamentalists that dinosaur bones and fossils are placed in the earth by Satan to deceive people. In an evangelistic bubble, answers in genesis are taking the ‘reasonable’ approach by not denying they existed, no, instead they say they were all crammed on to a boat and they lived beside mankind.
Reading sites such as AIG trying to explain dinosaurs is almost as painful as watching people try to explain why God’s country, USA isn’t mentioned in the Bible… because there is always the frantic notion that the Bible mentions neither because it was a non supernatural book and the authors had never heard of America or T-Rex’s.
Only cowards attack Christianity. They would not dare attack other beliefs, cults, denominations, faiths and religions because those other groups retaliate.
Death to Allah, Muhammad was a pedophile.
There goes your false assertion. I critique Evangelical Christianity because I was an Evangelical for fifty years and I live in a predominantly Christian country. Muslims, Hindus, Shintoists, etc do not affect my life in any away. When they do, I’ll write about them.
Whatever the context, claiming that you know the akshual thoughts of people and not the ones they actually express is borderline rude.
Borderline, nothin! 😀 It’s enraging, presumptuous, arrogant and over-the-top rude.
And usually involves committing false witness against the individual whose thoughts are being inaccurately “read” by the interloper.
Hey Keren. Many of your people advocate for killing people like me. Many of your people would stand by cheering as others of your ilk demean, belittle, accost, assault and use any method in their power to control, manipulate, eliminate and yes, even kill people like me. Yet every day people like me step out into the world..the real world, not your little electronic world, or church country club world with all your friends to coddle you and you safely hide with no concern. Every day we step out into the world to stand face to face with your hate and bigotry.
You won’t find any cowards in my world. They all bravely and openly live in spite of the danger. So you can just fuck off with your ignorance and prejudice.
Keren-Happuch–Christianity, especially conservative Christianity, is dysfunctional and abusive. We who comment here have seen plenty of that. And that’s not even considering all the child rape in the Catholic church and the sexual abuse happening in the SBC, IFB, and nondenominational evangelical churches. A lot of it is documented here in the Black Collar Crime series. We aren’t attacking Christianity so much as truth-telling about its bullying and bigoted behavior. Calling out that bad behavior is fair, just, and necessary. It’s also richly deserved.
KEREN-HAPPUCH-Christians, by and large, are the most hateful, judgmental, delusional, hypocritical group of religious people in America. Other religious groups aren’t trying to force their beliefs on me and others, change our laws to suit their beliefs or coming into our place of solace to spew your hate with your demeaning .words.and condemnation to a nonexistant hell. I have never personally had another person or persons of other faiths, atheists, agnostics, pagans,Muslims, Buddhists, Jews or anyone else try to chastise, berate or attempt to convert me like “Christians” have. I can assure you-you aren’t despised for your beliefs-you are despised for the way you treat people, especially those that differ from you.
Karen-Happauch—We don’t “attack” Christianity. We merely point out the inconsistencies and contradictions of the book Christians take as their holy text and the hypocrisy we experience in the behavior of too many Christians we encounter (e.g., they claim to follow a loving God but advocate killing people like me.
We could indeed critique other religions in similar ways. But the reason we (Bruce and those of us who comment on this blog) focus on Christianity is that we all were Christians for significant parts of our lives. Most of us were indoctrinated with its most virulent dogma; some of us (I include myself) were even physically as well as mentally harmed by putative representatives of the divine.
In my daily life, I encounter Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus and people from all kinds of other spiritual backgrounds. Some are colleagues; a few have become friends or friendly acquaintances. None has ever lied to, harassed, bullied or gaslit me in the name of whomever they worship or whatever they believe in the way some Christians have.
I have also known Holocaust survivors and African Americans who lived under Jim Crow—including one woman whose uncle was lynched before her eyes when she was a child. None of them had the kind of persecution complex I’ve seen in too many Christians. It seems, to me, that any time anyone has the temerity to question anything a Christian says, they compare themselves to the ones who became leonine lunches in the Colosseum.
Hey, I have been spat on, lied about. At work, I’ve sexually assaulted and pushed down stairs—by nice white Christian people with fancy titles—and blamed for those things. (Campus security and HR are there to cover the institution’s gluteus maximus, not to protect your person.) But I don’t go around whining “they all hate me” or “the world is out to get me” the way too many white Christians have. And I don’t call people who disagree with me “cowards” because, if I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that it takes one to know one.
Damn auto-correct! I was responding to Keren, not Karen.