Here’s something I’ve been thinking about lately: Noah’s Ark. You know: the big boat, the remains of which were discovered by satellite photo on top of a mountain in Turkey, onto which Noah and his family loaded two of every non-aquatic animal on the planet in order to save them from God’s watery wrath. Just picture all those animals, cheek by jowl on an enormous wooden boat! What a thing! No, seriously—let’s picture them.
Let’s start with the cats. There are 41 known species of cats in the world, and of course we’d need two of each, so that’s 82 cats, ranging from the largest (Bengal tiger) to the smallest (Black-footed Cat). Conservatively speaking, let’s say each pair would need about 4 square metres in which to live, plus enough food for all 82 to survive for forty-plus days (we have to assume that after the rain stopped on the 40th day, it took a while for all the water to evaporate and reveal dry land again). So we’re talking about at least around 160 square metres altogether, or about 1700 square feet—the size of a three bedroom, two bathroom house.
No problem for the ark, in other words! It was
300 cubits long (about 135 metres), and 50 cubits wide (about 22.5 metres), and had three stories. That’s a whopping 9100 square metres! So our cats and their food are only occupying, let’s say, about 3 percent of the available deck space. Luxury accommodations.
Moving on from the cats, let’s consider the rats and bats. There are about 2,277 species of rodents, ranging from the largest (the Capybara) to the smallest (Pygmy Jerboa). They have very fast metabolisms, so they eat a lot—we’ll need to pack serious rations for the rodents. There are about 1,240 species of bats—come on aboard, bats! Bring your food along too! Now, we can pack the 7,000 or so rodents and bats pretty closely together on the Ark, so they’re not going to require a whole lot of room. Nah, we’re fine.
Let’s round up the dogs now. There are about 32 species, so let’s say 64 of those puppies (sorry). Great. They’d probably need more room than the cats, but not much more.
Then we have deer: 47 species, ranging from the majestic moose to the wee northern pudu. I think we can assume they’d need more room than the dogs—fine, we’ll pop all 94 of them in there easy peasy.
Then we have the bears (grr!); the weasel family (57 species); the monkeys, apes and other primates (424 species); the marsupials (334 species); the big cattle-like and goat-like critters (143 species); the elephants (two kinds!), rhinos, giraffes, over 1900 more big animals altogether…the old ark’s looking a little low in the beam by now.
Okay, things are getting a bit sweaty, stinky and cramped at this point. But hold on—that was just the mammals. We also need to pack on all the land reptiles (over 9,000 species—oh hello, Galapagos tortoise!), the landlocked amphibians (6,000-ish), all of the planet’s non-aquatic birds (round about 9,000 species as well—can’t really expect them to stay in the air for a couple of months with no food really, and man, do they eat a lot), so that's another 48,000 animals…and the insects, estimated at
between six and ten million species. Right, the insects! And we’d have to have a lot more than two of many of those insects—the hive insects like ants, bees, wasps and termites don’t do all that well in pairs.
And of course we’d have to bring along plenty of food for all those hungry critters. Say, on that topic—for a lot of those animals, their food is
other animals. So round up another huge load of animals for the predators to eat and stuff them in (along with their own food to keep them from croaking prematurely, naturally).
So where does all of this lead us? I think we have no choice but to cast a skeptical eye on the whole story of the Ark. Let’s face it, the baboons must have been following along behind in a dinghy.
