(September 25, 2015 at 2:12 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote:(September 25, 2015 at 1:11 am)StuW Wrote: No, I don't understand. Your description only works if ALL animals are vegetarian. The likelyhood of a carnivore sticking to eating clean animals so as to not extinct a species is as likely as the flood itself. This is all a moot point anyway as any species needs ~ 100 individuals minimum to be genetically viable.
It's all moot because a single tiger must eat a lot more than every one of the "clean animals" they brought aboard:
(Source: http://seaworld.org/animal-info/animal-i...ng-habits/)
- Tigers may consume up to 40 kg (88 pounds) of meat at one time.
- It is estimated that every tiger consumes about 50 deer-sized animals each year, about one per week.
Let's see... Ark floats for one year... that equals 100 "deer-sized animals" just to keep the tigers alive.
Then there's the lions... according to these guys, the male and female lions average 15 pounds and 11 pounds per day, respectively. Call it 26 pounds per day per pair, and we get about 9500 pounds of meat for the trip, or (according to Butcher-Packer online, an "mature buck" (male deer) averaging 165 pounds will produce 83.08 pounds of meat, so we'll just round that to 85 lbs) a need for the two lions to consume roughly 112 deer on the trip.
Oh yeah, did I mention? There are the panther, jaguar, leopard, snow leopard, cougars, cheetahs, lynxes, pumas... oh man. That's a lot of meat-eating going on in that 450 foot long, 75 foot wide boat! Even if you presume that all eight of the human passengers on that boat spent all of their time hauling giant nets full of fish and seaweed aboard the vessel, there's no way they could get enough in there -- If you've ever watched an episode of Deadliest Catch, you'll have some idea of what I mean, here. Those guys use powerboats, electric hoists, and modern equipment... and they're lucky to fill one hold of one small ship. They might manage to feed a few dozen of the carnivore species aboard, assuming they never got tired, never got sick or injured doing such a dangerous job out on the ocean in a directionless barge, and basically fished every waking hour of the day with gigantic nets that never snapped, tore, or frayed.
Want to start a running tally of the "obligate carnivores" they would have to feed on that trip? (Obligate is a tear meaning they must eat meat and only or mainly meat, for their survival.)
I'll start: owls, falcons, hawks, eagles, vultures, domestic cats, alligators, crocodiles, komodo dragons, wolverines, snakes, ... whew, this could take a while. I hope my point was made already.
There is no way the food supplies needed to support even a fraction of the species that would have to be aboard the Ark for one year, not even counting the requirements of poop removal, oxygen circulation, and physically keeping the animals apart from one another so they didn't change the program and decide to eat one of the two unicorns to make them exti... oh damn.
No silly, there weren't lions and tigers and panthers etc on the ark. There was just one pair of the cat "kind" and they were nice little tabbies that lived on milk. They developed into all those other types of cats later - but NOT by evolution of course.
