Often the world will attempt to corner us by asking questions that they feel we will not be able to answer. Many Christians can not boldly answer flood-related questions from the scriptures, thus fueling the beliefs of the lost world. I am going to address one of the more difficult flood questions that I have encountered during the last year.
First, it is quite possible that the earth was one landmass, (Gen 1:9-10) Noah would have had representatives of the whole earth's animals within close proximity of the ark.
Many animals could be left off: (Gen 1:10/21-24 Gen 7:4 Gen 6:20 Gen 7:21)
Lets examine the dimensions of ark and space required for animals.
Mammals: 3,500
Birds: 8,600
Reptiles/Amphibians: 5,500
Fishes: 18,000
Tunicates etc: 1,700 / Echinoderms: 4,700
Arthropods: 815,000 / Mollusks: 88,000
Worms etc: 25,000 / Coelenterates etc: 10,000
Sponges: 5,000 / Protozoans: 15,000
TOTAL ANIMALS: 1,000,000
Noah could subtract the following: fish - 18,000/Tunicates(marine animals) - 1,700/Echinoderms (like starfish-sea urchins) - 4,700/Mollusks(mussles-clams-oysters) - 88,000/Coelenterates (corals-jelly fishes) - 10,000/Sponges - 5,000/Protozoans - 15,000 This eliminates 142,000 species of marine creatures.
In addition many mammals are aquatic and didnt need to go on the ark: whales, seals, porpoises. A large number of the 815,000 arthropods such as lobsters, crabs, water fleas, and barnacles could have been left out. Many of the 25,000 species of worm and insect could have survived outside of the ark.
For all practical purposes one could say that, at the outside, there was need for no more than 35,000 individual vertebrate animals on the ark.
Now lets see how they all could have fit on and been cared for on the ark:
We will consider the average animal to be the size of a sheep. A few would be larger but most would be smaller. 240 animals of the size of a sheep could be accommodated in a standard two deck stock car. 2 trains hauling 73 cars could carry the 35,000 animals. Based on the biblical dimensions of the ark, it was as large as 522 stock cars.
You do the math and you will see that Noah could easily have fit all of the needed animals and the food to care for them during the year long journey with room to spare.