How Did Animals Spread Across the World After the Flood?

After Noah exited the ark and all the animals dispersed across the world, how is it possible that certain animals or birds are found only on specific continents? For example, kangaroos only in Australia or horses being everywhere, elephants mainly in the warm continents of Africa and parts of Asia but not in America (before it was discovered)..

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Hello and blessings,

I will share with you an answer I've written on the subject:

Besides Australia and some specific islands, there is actually a connection between all the continents on Earth. There are strips of land connecting different continents, which is also the reason we find the Inca and Maya in the Americas, despite being far from Asia and Europe. There was technically a way to migrate from place to place, and humans did this without ships. Animals migrated too. We also need to remember that continental drift is a continuous process that takes hundreds and thousands of years, and it still occurs today, so it's reasonable to assume that 4000 years ago the continents were closer together, or at least the connecting strips of land were wider, allowing for easy movement from continent to continent, movement which today is difficult and sometimes impossible.

From the Torah, we can learn that the division of continents occurred after the Flood, at a later time in the days of the Tower of Babel, and it was likely a gradual process that happened during the Flood and hundreds of years afterward in several stages. In Genesis, chapter 1, the creation of a single landmass is described: "And Hashem said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so. And Hashem called the dry land Earth" (Genesis 1:9). But after the Flood, it describes Eber's son: "One was named Peleg because in his days the Earth was divided" (Genesis 10:25). Additionally, the holy Zohar, published over 700 years ago, taught this: "A single land was brought forth by the waters, and from it, seven lands were formed" (Zohar, Parashat Bereishit page 21a). This explanation may also clarify the distribution of animals worldwide. We can say that animals of all kinds migrated by divine guidance to specific places on the single landmass and stayed there as the land split into the different continents over hundreds or thousands of years that we see today.

See more questions and answers about Noah's Ark and the flood.

Blessings,

Daniel Ballas