rlogan

The term you are looking for is "hogging". That is why they have to be made from steel.


from: wooden ships


"Hogging is no longer the problem it was in the 1920's when it threatened the nation's merchant fleet -- because those ships have sunk!"

Arctish

The story of the flood indicates that Noah's family and the animals floated around for another 7 months following the 40 days and 40 nights of rain. In that time most of the animals would have reached adult size, so I think Plognark 's original estimate for space requirements would not be all that far off the mark.

Arctish

originally posted by Godless Wonder
I think the importance of the Noah story lies in the fact that so many of the ancients lived in areas prone to annual flooding. No doubt some years the flooding was particularly bad, and people and livestock would have died attempting to reach safety. It would have been reassuring to them to believe that god had promised that he would not allow the floodwaters to destroy everything, and that the rainbow was a sign of that promise.

Boro Nut

I wonder about that too. I've a fair idea it's a place called Asia.

Boro Nut

Dark Jedi

I dunno. 7 months of waiting their turn to suckle off of Noah's wife and daughter-in-law's teats would certainly stunt growth in larger animals....

Plognark

The story of the flood indicates that Noah's family and the animals floated around for another 7 months following the 40 days and 40 nights of rain. In that time most of the animals would have reached adult size, so I think Plognark 's original estimate for space requirements would not be all that far off the mark.

Yep; I took that into account actually. I did make the rough 50% cut in food and water consumption, although most animals can't even survive on less than 60% of either for long, i figured even if they were young, the food consumption of growing baby animals is quite staggering. Anyone out there ever had a puppy?

And, of course, Noah would have had to know EXACTLY when the boat would have landed to pack precicely enough food for all the animals. Somehow I don't think Noah was the greatest genius of logistics of all time.

I should do a full write up some time...might be interesting. I did it because a bunch of moron fundies were claiming that the boat was held together by the will of god, blah, blah, blah, so I finally got fed up and said the boat wasn't big enough. They didn't believe me so I went on a bit of a mathematical tirade.

I'm a huge nerd so maybe i'll write this up while skipping work tommorow (a couple feet of snow on the way)

Anyone got any favorite animals they want to pick for inclusion on the ark? Space is at a premium so get your votes in now!! Nothing too exotic, since most of my food consumption rates will be coming from zoo web sites; they may not have raw data.

I'll be ignoring food spoilage just to make a point as well. Maybe god can stop mold from growing on hay or meat from rotting or something. At any rate, you can't ignore volume. Unless god warped space and put a pocket dimension into the ark (better not give the idiots more ideas... :banghead: )

DrJim

I'm sort of wondering if you will need to factor in huge tanks for the critters that like water: can a Hippo be happy / healthy without a swimming pool? And otters and platypusses. Did walrusses adn seals survive by swimming or were they taken on board, too?

I don't suppose there needed to be any special rations for the dung-beetles.

Plognark

I'm not even going to be that generous. These animals get no free space; i'm talking no more than a foot of clearance on all sides of each animal, and those animals smaller than a cubic foot will be given exactly one cubic foot of space each, and i'll still put money that you can't come close to fitting even the broadest definition of "kind" on that stupid boat.

I may not even need to include beetles and bugs; i have a suspicion that i'll run out of room before then.

I'm pretty sure there was more than enough food for the dung beetles anyhow

Asha'man

I want to see the math on just beetles. Given the large numbers of species that exist, I'll speculate that you could fill the entire ark with nothing but beetles.

Don't forget tropical birds, either. Again, each one is pretty small, but there are a huge number of species. And the phrase "eating like a bird" is very misleading, since birds can eat their entire bodyweight in a day.

Mageth

How long before Magus or some other myth-supporter claims that God coulda caused all those baby animals to hibernate for the entire voyage?

As big of a problem as the food on the ark is...what the hell did the animals eat after they left the ark? According to the flood-supporters, all those sedimentary layers were laid down by the flood, so the earth must have been absolutely barren, with any food source buried under thousands of feet of mud.