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Growing up in an area with big ant hills, I just can't wrap my head around the fact that there are more ants by weight than all other mammals combined. Because
by frantathefranta 2y ago
Growing up in an area with big ant hills, I just can't wrap my head around the fact that there are more ants by weight than all other mammals combined. Because I can imagine a small forest with multiple of these ant hills which undoubtedly have millions of ants, but at the same time an apartment building with a few humans in it would surely outweigh all of those ants. So where are all the ants hiding?
- minitoar 2y agoThey specify wild mammals. Humans are like 600 megatons I think.
- darkwater 2y ago60 megatons. Study mentions that the 12 megatons of ants are equivalent to 20% of the total human mass.
- nathanmcrae 2y agoNo, 600 megatons (~E12 kg) is closer. There are E10 humans and we weigh E2 kg. More precisely: 6E1 kg * 8E9 = 5.6E11
- ahartmetz 2y agoAbout 500 megatons. 7e9 humans * 0.075 tons/human / 1e6 tons/megaton
- ijidak 2y agoWow. That shows how much wildlife we've killed off. Whales, buffalo, elephants, and the list goes on. In a balanced world, I feel like we shouldn't have more mass than the total of all these massive creatures. I wonder in what year human biomass passed wild mammal biomass.
- ahartmetz 2y agoPretty sure it's less the reduced wildlife and more the efficient food production of / for humans. Modern agriculture is crazy efficient compared to grazing, foraging and such - in forests, where the relatively "unproductive" trees get most of the light.