Dinosaurs and the lost paradise

When did animals begin to kill and eat other animals?

After the Flood, God gave people official permission to kill animals for food and eat them. Man could now eat everything, green plants and animals (Genesis 9:2,3). This means that people from Noah’s family could have eaten dinosaurs, if they tasted good.

But God told the animals (including dinosaurs) that they should not kill people. If they did, they would have to answer to God for it (Genesis 9:5b).

At the same time, the Bible does not say that animals were forbidden to kill other animals in this new world. God does not repeat his command, here or later, that animals are to eat plants. So, it could be that the end of the flood marks the time when land animals and birds began to develop the habit of killing for food. Or, it might just be the time when these habits started to become common.

In the world before the Flood some animals might have died because of natural causes. For example, some must have been killed by injuries, like falls from trees. Other animals would surely find these dead bodies and smell them. Could it be that some animals, also, decided to taste the bodies and even eat them?

Actually, this would have been a good thing. It would be best to have a quick way to get rid of dead, smelly bodies in the world after the Fall. Today, it is important for animals to do this.

So, it could be that animals ate dead animals once in a while before the Flood, but that few (if any) animals killed for food until sometime after the Flood. This seems to make sense, since the fossils show that the pre-Flood world had plenty of plants to eat. The animals probably did not need to kill to live.

Meat-eating would have been encouraged by the Flood. The Flood was the world’s greatest disaster. It destroyed all the world’s huge, lush forests of plant life. Until new forests grew, there was much less food. The Flood would have left a certain number of decaying animal bodies unburied on the Earth’s surface. The bodies would have been tempting meals for hungry, sharp-toothed animals.

It must have been much harder to survive in the world after the Flood. Since food was no longer so abundant, some animals were forced to compete. This would cause quarrels and fights, even among animals in the same family.

Plants growing in the soils of the destroyed Earth would have had less protein and vitamins than before, especially in certain areas of the world. With an increasing taste for meat, hunger could have driven some animals to kill for food, instead of waiting for dead bodies to turn up. Animals needed to feed their hungry families. Hunger and starvation can make some creatures desperate and vicious.

What an awful thing sin did to God’s wonderful, peaceful Creation!

NEXT — The Terrible Effects of Sinful Disobedience

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