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A useful visualisation of life on Earth is a picture in Encyclopaedia Britannica. (To the right on a desktop browser, Relative biomass in gigatons of carbon).

A useful visualisation of life on Earth is a picture in Encyclopaedia Britannica. (To the right on a desktop browser, Relative biomass in gigatons of carbon). https://www.britannica.com/science/biomass https://www.britannica.com/science/biomass It depresses me that there is an order of magnitude more humans than wild mammals. But interestingly there are 35x more bacteria than all animals. https://www.britannica.com/science/biomass https://www.britannica.com/science/biomass

quirk 3y ago
If you don't like being depressed by that, you could read: https://nav.al/david-deutsch https://nav.al/david-deutsch
netsharc 3y ago
I remember reading that we kill 2 billion chickens a year to eat, although this site[1] says more like 66 billion chickens a year (and their source[2], although on their graph they divided the chicken figure by 1000)... 66 billion chickens! I just had fried chicken for lunch, but damn, we humans are savages aren't we... [1] https://thehumaneleague.org/article/how-many-chickens-are-in-the-world https://thehumaneleague.org/article/how-many-chickens-are-in... [2] https://faunalytics.org/global-animal-slaughter-statistics-and-charts-2020-update/ https://faunalytics.org/global-animal-slaughter-statistics-a...
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  The numbers are so crazy that it's easier to understand the insane daily slaughter numbers which are in the millions: https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-get-slaughtered-every-day https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-get-slaughtered-... Another mind blowing stat is that of all the mammals in the world, wild mammals only make up 4% of the mammal biomass, humans 34%, and livestock (farmed animals) 62%. https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass
  - someNameIG 3y ago
    Sea life is more insane, high end estimates are over 2 trillion killed a year, so ~5.5 billion a day. http://fishcount.org.uk/studydatascreens/2016/numbers-of-wild-fish-A0-2016.php http://fishcount.org.uk/studydatascreens/2016/numbers-of-wil...
    - hombre_fatal 3y ago
      That's nauseating.
fritzo 3y ago
> more humans than wild mammals by biomass, but even just rats + mice outnumber humans
pardoned_turkey 3y ago
Why does it depress you that we as a species fared well thus far? Is there intrinsically higher value to a planet where humans struggle but the quagga dominates on all continents? I'm not taking the position that the negative impacts of our civilization should be ignored, or that biodiversity shouldn't be preserved. But I really struggle to understand going from "we should be better stewards of the environment for our own benefit" to "it would be better if we never succeeded in the first place." Maybe that isn't your point?
- Scarblac 3y ago
  I just have a gigantic feeling of loss. So many huge ecosystems, so many of the things we things we grew up with reading about in books and seeing in those beautiful Attenborough narrated documentaries are just coming to an end, forever. Replaced by the same human sprawl as everywhere. That there are so many of us and so few of everything else isn't necessarily "faring well".
- digging 3y ago
  > But I really struggle to understand going from "we should be better stewards of the environment for our own benefit" to "it would be better if we never succeeded in the first place." They didn't say the latter, though. I think it's odd to even bring the idea of success into the question - I would not define "10xing the rest of the mammal biomass" as "success". Not even on evolutionary criteria - usually I understand "successful" creatures as ones that are widespread and long-lived, but we really haven't combined those two traits yet.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > "it would be better if we never succeeded in the first place." I don't see where anyone even implied that.
- nonameiguess 3y ago
  Not the parent, but I'm also frequently saddened by loss of wildlife and my "point" is definitely not that it would be better if humans never proliferated in the first place. I'm almost certain you can understand this sentiment. Most people have had to leave a home, break up with a significant other, change careers, in such a way that it ultimately worked out for the better and it was necessary to achieve some goal, but the loss at the time still brings about grief. I'm not going to say this is an exactly analogous situation. One, I don't know that is really is necessary to human civilization thriving that we have to rapidly and recklessly destroy natural habitats the world over to make way for farms or just plunder crops, pelts, and whale oil and what not for a few decades to make a single generation rich until it's all gone. There is very likely a more sustainable way to do it that isn't as disruptive to the pre-existing ecosystems and still allows us to feed and house a large number of people. This isn't purely a matter of hey, they needed to go to make way for us. Think of blue whales or bison in North America. Populations absolutely decimated, damn near reduced to nothing until legislation and interional treaties finally agreed to protect them. But all that ocean and all that grassland is still there. We didn't displace them to use it for something else. We just killed them damn near for nothing, because blubber and fur could be traded for a lot of money for a few decades. Second, it remains to be seen whether this is really for the better even for humans. All of this "success" you're talking about is the population exploding over the course of the last 500 years. The reasons for this are largely positive reasons. Indoor plumbing, germ theory of disease, global transportation networks, figuring out how to rapidly move food and water, not only for ourselves but for crops. Drastically increased land yield. All great stuff. But we're talking about a few centuries of success here. Sharks have been apex predators for 200 million years. Whether humanity is truly going to thrive over the long run or be a flash in the pan that disappears and leaves a mass extinction in its wake is yet to be determined. But still, even if it ends up ultimately turning out for the best, it is still perfectly possible and reasonable to feel grief about the loss virtually all other large animals with rich inner lives and social relations have had to endure while it happened. Have you ever read about or watched many US Civil War material? I don't know that it's totally unique or even atypical for wars, but it's always poignant to me in the way that the two sides largely didn't hate each other. Many of the victors took little joy in the victory. The land they plundered and people they killed were their own country and their own countrymen. I can't say it was a bad thing as it ultimately ended one of the most evil things humans have ever done to other humans, but it was still a sad thing.
crazygringo 3y ago
But that's by weight, which is kind of a weird measure. Conversely, there are ~130 billion wild mammals in the world [1], but only 8.1 billion people. We're just particularly large as far as most mammals go. But in terms of population, we're still far, far outnumbered. And important metrics like diversity or endangered status depend on population counts, not biomass. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_mammals_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_mammals_by_population
- scbrg 3y ago
  > But in terms of population, we're still far, far outnumbered. Eh, no? No other species there comes even close to 8 billion individuals. If you add the individuals from all the other species, then yes, we're outnumbered. But that's an even more odd metric. It's a bit like saying Smith is an unusual name since the Smiths are outnumbered by people with other names.
  - digging 3y ago
    But... the original comparison was humans vs all other mammals. So it's actually the correct metric.
    - scbrg 3y ago
      The point is, that when you've got a selection of thousands[0], having one element in that selection outmatch all the others put together by a factor of 1:10 by one metric (biomass), and clearly winning by a margin of more than one magnitude in another metric (number of individuals), that certainly indicates that that particular element holds an overwhelming dominance. Saying that we're "far outnumbered" is really nothing but Mark Twain's third form of lies. [0] https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/article/99/1/1/4834091 https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/article/99/1/1/4834091
      - crazygringo 3y ago
        What are you talking about. That's not what the conversation was about. If you have a parliament with 100 seats, and the biggest party has 10 seats, and then 30 other parties split up the remaining 90 -- then yes, the biggest party is still far, far outnumbered. It's the largest, but it's nowhere even close to a majority. There are no statistical lies here, so please don't make those kinds of accusations here. The point is, biomass is not the only lens to look through.
belinder 3y ago
Am I reading this correctly, for every 10 ton of animal biomass there is 1 ton of virus biomass? Are there really that many viruses out there?
- BoiledCabbage 3y ago
  Thinking about it now yeah thats wild. For bacteria sure, I get it - but for viruses that's really surprising. Meaning either some animals are 10x their mass from viruses (very unlikely), or there are *way* more tons of viruses just sitting outside of any animal waiting to get a host than there are inside hosts (which is surprising).
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    Are they animal viruses or all viruses? There are a lot of bacteria viruses, bacteriophages. I can see the viruses being noticeable percentage of bacteria mass.
Xeoncross 3y ago
People are generally shocked at how important bacteria are inside the human/animal body and outside in nature for the balance of the environment. The west especially seems to have been conditioned to be anti-bacteria via all the advertisements. For example, people always want anti-bacteria soap. All bacteria is not the same (or bad) and most are actually critical for larger life.
ranting-moth 3y ago
I feel very small after seeing that picture.
hulitu 3y ago
>It depresses me that there is an order of magnitude more humans than wild mammals. We are working on it.(wars). The only problem is, when we finish with ourselves, there might be no mamal left.
allemagne 3y ago
This graphic is fascinating. I'd be really interested to see a breakdown of relative biomass in human-farmed crops, food compared to livestock feed compared to lumber Also even more ambitious: it would be really cool to see changes in this visualization over time. Watch bacteria and then plants inherit the world over millions of years, slow the timescale down and then see dinosaurs come and go, and finally the ominous explosion of human-controlled biomass at the very end.

quirk 3y ago

If you don't like being depressed by that, you could read: https://nav.al/david-deutsch https://nav.al/david-deutsch

netsharc 3y ago

I remember reading that we kill 2 billion chickens a year to eat, although this site[1] says more like 66 billion chickens a year (and their source[2], although on their graph they divided the chicken figure by 1000)... 66 billion chickens! I just had fried chicken for lunch, but damn, we humans are savages aren't we... [1] https://thehumaneleague.org/article/how-many-chickens-are-in-the-world https://thehumaneleague.org/article/how-many-chickens-are-in... [2] https://faunalytics.org/global-animal-slaughter-statistics-and-charts-2020-update/ https://faunalytics.org/global-animal-slaughter-statistics-a...

hombre_fatal 3y ago
The numbers are so crazy that it's easier to understand the insane daily slaughter numbers which are in the millions: https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-get-slaughtered-every-day https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-get-slaughtered-... Another mind blowing stat is that of all the mammals in the world, wild mammals only make up 4% of the mammal biomass, humans 34%, and livestock (farmed animals) 62%. https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass
- someNameIG 3y ago
  Sea life is more insane, high end estimates are over 2 trillion killed a year, so ~5.5 billion a day. http://fishcount.org.uk/studydatascreens/2016/numbers-of-wild-fish-A0-2016.php http://fishcount.org.uk/studydatascreens/2016/numbers-of-wil...
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    That's nauseating.

fritzo 3y ago

> more humans than wild mammals by biomass, but even just rats + mice outnumber humans

pardoned_turkey 3y ago

Why does it depress you that we as a species fared well thus far? Is there intrinsically higher value to a planet where humans struggle but the quagga dominates on all continents? I'm not taking the position that the negative impacts of our civilization should be ignored, or that biodiversity shouldn't be preserved. But I really struggle to understand going from "we should be better stewards of the environment for our own benefit" to "it would be better if we never succeeded in the first place." Maybe that isn't your point?

Scarblac 3y ago
I just have a gigantic feeling of loss. So many huge ecosystems, so many of the things we things we grew up with reading about in books and seeing in those beautiful Attenborough narrated documentaries are just coming to an end, forever. Replaced by the same human sprawl as everywhere. That there are so many of us and so few of everything else isn't necessarily "faring well".
digging 3y ago
> But I really struggle to understand going from "we should be better stewards of the environment for our own benefit" to "it would be better if we never succeeded in the first place." They didn't say the latter, though. I think it's odd to even bring the idea of success into the question - I would not define "10xing the rest of the mammal biomass" as "success". Not even on evolutionary criteria - usually I understand "successful" creatures as ones that are widespread and long-lived, but we really haven't combined those two traits yet.
JohnFen 3y ago
> "it would be better if we never succeeded in the first place." I don't see where anyone even implied that.
nonameiguess 3y ago
Not the parent, but I'm also frequently saddened by loss of wildlife and my "point" is definitely not that it would be better if humans never proliferated in the first place. I'm almost certain you can understand this sentiment. Most people have had to leave a home, break up with a significant other, change careers, in such a way that it ultimately worked out for the better and it was necessary to achieve some goal, but the loss at the time still brings about grief. I'm not going to say this is an exactly analogous situation. One, I don't know that is really is necessary to human civilization thriving that we have to rapidly and recklessly destroy natural habitats the world over to make way for farms or just plunder crops, pelts, and whale oil and what not for a few decades to make a single generation rich until it's all gone. There is very likely a more sustainable way to do it that isn't as disruptive to the pre-existing ecosystems and still allows us to feed and house a large number of people. This isn't purely a matter of hey, they needed to go to make way for us. Think of blue whales or bison in North America. Populations absolutely decimated, damn near reduced to nothing until legislation and interional treaties finally agreed to protect them. But all that ocean and all that grassland is still there. We didn't displace them to use it for something else. We just killed them damn near for nothing, because blubber and fur could be traded for a lot of money for a few decades. Second, it remains to be seen whether this is really for the better even for humans. All of this "success" you're talking about is the population exploding over the course of the last 500 years. The reasons for this are largely positive reasons. Indoor plumbing, germ theory of disease, global transportation networks, figuring out how to rapidly move food and water, not only for ourselves but for crops. Drastically increased land yield. All great stuff. But we're talking about a few centuries of success here. Sharks have been apex predators for 200 million years. Whether humanity is truly going to thrive over the long run or be a flash in the pan that disappears and leaves a mass extinction in its wake is yet to be determined. But still, even if it ends up ultimately turning out for the best, it is still perfectly possible and reasonable to feel grief about the loss virtually all other large animals with rich inner lives and social relations have had to endure while it happened. Have you ever read about or watched many US Civil War material? I don't know that it's totally unique or even atypical for wars, but it's always poignant to me in the way that the two sides largely didn't hate each other. Many of the victors took little joy in the victory. The land they plundered and people they killed were their own country and their own countrymen. I can't say it was a bad thing as it ultimately ended one of the most evil things humans have ever done to other humans, but it was still a sad thing.

crazygringo 3y ago

But that's by weight, which is kind of a weird measure. Conversely, there are ~130 billion wild mammals in the world [1], but only 8.1 billion people. We're just particularly large as far as most mammals go. But in terms of population, we're still far, far outnumbered. And important metrics like diversity or endangered status depend on population counts, not biomass. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_mammals_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_mammals_by_population

scbrg 3y ago
> But in terms of population, we're still far, far outnumbered. Eh, no? No other species there comes even close to 8 billion individuals. If you add the individuals from all the other species, then yes, we're outnumbered. But that's an even more odd metric. It's a bit like saying Smith is an unusual name since the Smiths are outnumbered by people with other names.
- digging 3y ago
  But... the original comparison was humans vs all other mammals. So it's actually the correct metric.
  - scbrg 3y ago
    The point is, that when you've got a selection of thousands[0], having one element in that selection outmatch all the others put together by a factor of 1:10 by one metric (biomass), and clearly winning by a margin of more than one magnitude in another metric (number of individuals), that certainly indicates that that particular element holds an overwhelming dominance. Saying that we're "far outnumbered" is really nothing but Mark Twain's third form of lies. [0] https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/article/99/1/1/4834091 https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/article/99/1/1/4834091
    - crazygringo 3y ago
      What are you talking about. That's not what the conversation was about. If you have a parliament with 100 seats, and the biggest party has 10 seats, and then 30 other parties split up the remaining 90 -- then yes, the biggest party is still far, far outnumbered. It's the largest, but it's nowhere even close to a majority. There are no statistical lies here, so please don't make those kinds of accusations here. The point is, biomass is not the only lens to look through.

belinder 3y ago

Am I reading this correctly, for every 10 ton of animal biomass there is 1 ton of virus biomass? Are there really that many viruses out there?

BoiledCabbage 3y ago
Thinking about it now yeah thats wild. For bacteria sure, I get it - but for viruses that's really surprising. Meaning either some animals are 10x their mass from viruses (very unlikely), or there are *way* more tons of viruses just sitting outside of any animal waiting to get a host than there are inside hosts (which is surprising).
- ianburrell 3y ago
  Are they animal viruses or all viruses? There are a lot of bacteria viruses, bacteriophages. I can see the viruses being noticeable percentage of bacteria mass.

Xeoncross 3y ago

People are generally shocked at how important bacteria are inside the human/animal body and outside in nature for the balance of the environment. The west especially seems to have been conditioned to be anti-bacteria via all the advertisements. For example, people always want anti-bacteria soap. All bacteria is not the same (or bad) and most are actually critical for larger life.

ranting-moth 3y ago

I feel very small after seeing that picture.

hulitu 3y ago

>It depresses me that there is an order of magnitude more humans than wild mammals. We are working on it.(wars). The only problem is, when we finish with ourselves, there might be no mamal left.

allemagne 3y ago

This graphic is fascinating. I'd be really interested to see a breakdown of relative biomass in human-farmed crops, food compared to livestock feed compared to lumber Also even more ambitious: it would be really cool to see changes in this visualization over time. Watch bacteria and then plants inherit the world over millions of years, slow the timescale down and then see dinosaurs come and go, and finally the ominous explosion of human-controlled biomass at the very end.