Noah’s Ark Facts & Figures

How big was the ark? 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, 30 cubits tall. A cubit was the length of a man's arm from his elbow to his fingertips, so about 18 inches. This means the ark was about the length of four and a half football fields (450 feet), 75 feet wide and three stories tall (45 feet.)

Multiplying out the length times the width gives about 33,750 square feet per floor, or about 101,250 square feet in total - more than the floor space in 20 regulation-sized basketball courts or roughly the available volume of more than 550 modern railroad stock cars.

How many animals were in the ark?

There are over 1 million species of animals in the world today.

Of this number, an estimated 800,000 or more species either live primarily in the water, can survive exclusively in the water if needed or are so small as to be relatively negligible in terms of allocating space (such as a fly, a honey bee or a worm).

Researchers estimate that perhaps as few as 35,000 animals would have needed to be in the ark to ensure survival. Not all of the animals would have needed to be adults. Some of the animals would have gone into hibernation. Given these facts, the ark could easily have accommodated all of the animals and related foods, etc., needed for the journey.

What animals were on the ark? Seven pairs of each kind of clean animal and two pairs of each kind of other animals were taken on the ark, Gen. 6:19-20; 7:2-3. "Clean" means that the animals were acceptable for sacrifice to God. It wasn't until AFTER Noah and his family left the ark that using animals for food was permissible for mankind, Gen. 9:3. "Clean" animals are also permissible for human food purposes.

How long were they in the ark? Approximately 370 days. (It rained for 40 days and 40 nights, then took almost another year for the water to recede.)

How long did it take for Noah to build the ark? The Bible does not say specifically. When we first meet Noah in Gen. 5:32, he is already 500 years old. When he enters the ark, he was 600 years old, Gen. 7:6. Exactly how old Noah was when he began work on the ark is not stated, but he could have worked on it for up to 100 years.

What people were on the ark? The Bible says there were eight people on the ark. Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives. His sons were named Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The Bible does not specifically name Noah's wife, though there is a tradition that a woman named Naamah, mentioned in Gen. 4:22, was his wife. The names of his daughters in law do not appear in the Bible.

What did Noah do after he left the ark? He first gave sacrifice to God. Later, he became a vintner and grew grapes.

How old was Noah when he died? 950 years old. After the death of Noah, the lifespan of people quickly began to drop down to what we would consider a more typical lifespan. Abram, who was a descendant of Noah (as was everyone after the flood), came along 10 generations after Noah. Abram, whose name was later changed to Abraham, lived 175 years. Lifespans continued to decline after that point. Some suggest that the decline in lifespans is a direct result of the impact of sin & the resulting chaos that it causes to people.

Sources: Taylor, Stanley and Paul S. Taylor, Paul, "Could Noah's Could Noah's Ark really hold all the animals that were supposed to be preserved from Flood?" Christian Answers Network Web site (Gilbert, AZ: Christian Answers Network, 1996), URL: ChristianAnswers.Net/q-acb/acb-t008.html.

Whitcomb, John and Morris, Henry. The Genesis Flood : the Biblical record and its scientific implications. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co, 1982.