Difference between revisions of "Caring for the animals in Noah's ark"
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== Watering == | == Watering == | ||
Each animal would have to be watered each day. Say watering an animal took only 20 seconds. That gives us 88 Human hours of work watering animals a day. | Each animal would have to be watered each day. Say watering an animal took only 20 seconds. That gives us 88 Human hours of work watering animals a day. | ||
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| + | More problematic would be the source of potable water. | ||
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| + | If the flood waters were used, some method of purification would be needed to remove the silt, salt, and other high concentrations of toxins. Distillation would require a tremendous quantity of fuel and labor. Filtering it through sand would be painfully slow, would require tons upon tons of sand weighing a minimum of 90 pounds per cubic foot<ref>[http://www.reade.com/Particle_Briefings/spec_gra2.html]</ref>, and the sand would have to be changed periodically due to mineral buildup. Solar distillation would require sunlight, which would be lacking for the first forty days of rains, and vast surface areas for water to evaporate and condense. Chemical purification and boiling, ignoring the impossible logistics, would do nothing to diminish the toxic levels of minerals. No matter the purification method, a method to move thousands of gallons per day, from the waterline to upper levels, would be needed. | ||
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| + | Storing water from before the flood would be even more absurd. Assume that at least 100 of the animals had at a minimum the water requirements of a [[goat]]. A goat requires more than two gallons of water per day to survive<ref>[http://www.clemson.edu/extension/drought/waterman.htm/livewat.htm]</ref>. Water weighs over eight pounds per gallon<ref>[http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/subsection1_4_2_0_7.html]</ref>. For these 100 animals alone, 200 gallons of water would be needed each day, weighing in excess of 1600 pounds. To last 376 days, 75200 gallons weighing 601600 pounds would have to be brought aboard and stored, without compromising the buoyancy and stability of the Ark -- for just 100 animals. | ||
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| + | It is conceivable that a system of ducts could have autonomously captured rainwater and watered the animals for the forty days of heavy rains. However, the problem remains that 336 days of water would need to be stored, purified, and/or captured. Only by heavy, regular rains would this be conceivable, which of course contradicts the statement that the rains stopped on the fortieth day. | ||
== Feeding == | == Feeding == | ||
Revision as of 10:37, 30 April 2008
The story of the global flood in the bible has Noah and his immediate family (8 people in total[1]) caring for every kind of animal in the entire world. In his book Noah's ark:A feasibility study, creationist author John Woodmorappe asserts that only 16,000 kinds of animals would have been taken on the ark.[2] The total would have been a lot more but we shall concede this point for the purpose of expediency. Even if only 16,000 animals were to be brought on that ark, eight people could not possibly have cared for them all.
Watering
Each animal would have to be watered each day. Say watering an animal took only 20 seconds. That gives us 88 Human hours of work watering animals a day.
More problematic would be the source of potable water.
If the flood waters were used, some method of purification would be needed to remove the silt, salt, and other high concentrations of toxins. Distillation would require a tremendous quantity of fuel and labor. Filtering it through sand would be painfully slow, would require tons upon tons of sand weighing a minimum of 90 pounds per cubic foot[3], and the sand would have to be changed periodically due to mineral buildup. Solar distillation would require sunlight, which would be lacking for the first forty days of rains, and vast surface areas for water to evaporate and condense. Chemical purification and boiling, ignoring the impossible logistics, would do nothing to diminish the toxic levels of minerals. No matter the purification method, a method to move thousands of gallons per day, from the waterline to upper levels, would be needed.
Storing water from before the flood would be even more absurd. Assume that at least 100 of the animals had at a minimum the water requirements of a goat. A goat requires more than two gallons of water per day to survive[4]. Water weighs over eight pounds per gallon[5]. For these 100 animals alone, 200 gallons of water would be needed each day, weighing in excess of 1600 pounds. To last 376 days, 75200 gallons weighing 601600 pounds would have to be brought aboard and stored, without compromising the buoyancy and stability of the Ark -- for just 100 animals.
It is conceivable that a system of ducts could have autonomously captured rainwater and watered the animals for the forty days of heavy rains. However, the problem remains that 336 days of water would need to be stored, purified, and/or captured. Only by heavy, regular rains would this be conceivable, which of course contradicts the statement that the rains stopped on the fortieth day.
Feeding
Even feeding all the animals would be literally impossible. Say setting the estimate low each person could feed one animal every 30 seconds. This means that 133 human hours of labor would be needed to feed every animal each day.
Dung
Living in piles of their own dung is very unhealthy for animals and after too long they would die. The animals on Noah's ark would have to have their cages cleaned periodically. Say this had to happen only once every 10 days the problem is still unmanageable. Eight people cleaning 1,600 cages a day is absurd.
Lets take a closer look at what it would take to clean an animals cage.
- Setting the estimate low we could say the process of removing the dung took 60 seconds for a large cage, 10 seconds for a small cage. We could say the average time spent per cage would be 30 seconds.
- The dung would have to be thrown overboard eventually so setting the estimate low again we could say the cleaner would have to empty his waste container only every 20 cages.
- The time taken to empty the waste overboard would vary on the position of the cage being cleaned. The ones on the deck below the water would take longer to empty their waste than the ones on the upper decks, while the ones working in the center of the ark would take longer to empty their waste than the ones on the edge. Setting the estimate low again we are looking at 3 minutes to empty waste.
- Calculating this out we are looking at 17 human hours of labor removing dung.
Urine
Animals also pee. Animals on the top deck would not need to have their urine dealt with because the decks could theoretically be slanted so the urine would flow out unto the ocean. (God must have supplied really detailed blueprints for Noah to get all this right.) The urine on the bottom decks however, would have to be manually removed or else it would build up and sink the ship. Say there were even only 10000 animals on the bottom two decks. Say setting the estimate low each animal only peed on average one fourth of a cup per day. That gives us 2500 cups (165 gallons) of urine that needed to be bilge pumped per day.
Now reasonably the most a person can carry is two one and a half gallon buckets per trip, but well say that each person can carry 5 gallons a trip. That gives 31.2 trips of "piss duty". Calculating this out we are looking at 1.5 human hours on "piss duty".
Pee, pee, pee. This is gross and I will not carry no more pee above decks this day! Pee on, les creatures!
Conclusion
Adding up all the hours we get that the 8 inhabitants of Noah's ark would have had to perform 239 hours of labor each day. That means 29 hours of labor a day per person, Noah and his family must have been extraordinary people!