Is it possible to know how many animals were on the Ark? Yes, that is, if we can count every kind of animal that is alive today, as well as any animal that has become extinct. God explained to Noah that He would bring to Noah every animal “of their kinds” (Genesis 6:20), thus the ark did not contain every species of animal, but only every kind of animal, for example, one kind of cat, one kind of dog, one kind of horse. Biologically, we know that within every animal is the genetic code of every species within its kind. Thus, only one male and female according to their kind is all that is needed to rebuild thousands of species within a kind. Today, there are 5,000 kinds of animals. But God brought upon the ark 2 of every kind, thus there would be 10,000 animals on the ark. But we also must account for any animal that is now extinct in our day. To be more than fair, let’s double the number of animals to account for the extinct; so, we are up to 20,000 animals on the ark. However, God also brought 14 of every clean animal, let’s estimate the clean animals on the ark to be about 1,000 more animals; thus, we have a total of 21,000 animals. Considering the capacity of animals in modern shipping vessels, and since we know the exact size of the ark, simple math would put the ark’s carrying capacity to be 180,000 animals. Thus, all the animals on the ark would have taken up only 12% of the ark’s capacity. So, we see that the animals had plenty of room to stretch out!

by Tanner Campbell.