If everything has a purpose then evil doesn't exist

[Ahriman]

Since we are talking make-believe, why not just have God put them into a magic form of cryo-sleep, so that they don't need to eat?

As for their being too many species to fit in the Arc, why not imagine that God used a shrink ray when they boarded, and reversed it when they disembarked?

Its a myth.  It isn't history.

because taking baby mammals doesn't require a huge leap of faith, and it is still consistent to the directions God gave.. it's just kinda common sense thing to do if you had to load up species that would normally want to feed on each other or require literal tons of food/meat for a given journey.

There are several dozen if not hundreds of cultures all of which have a flood narrative in their history. to say the flood is not a historic event is ignoring the historical evidence that speaks to the contrary.

do a wiki search for "list of flood myths" and there are several dozen that are compiled there.

Yeah, there was a flood, but no ark, no animals on the ark, no Noah.