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How many ants live on Earth? (2022)

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Re: How many ants live on Earth? (2022)

#31

Post by darkwater »

minitoar wrote: post #26
frantathefranta wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They specify wild mammals. Humans are like 600 megatons I think.

60 megatons. Study mentions that the 12 megatons of ants are equivalent to 20% of the total human mass.

Re: How many ants live on Earth? (2022)

#32

Post by Qem »

whycome wrote: post #17
picafrost wrote: post #11

This number doesn't surprise me. I live within the Arctic circle and there are a lot of wood ants [0] in my area. Among the various reasons wood ants are fascinating (aphid farming, formic acid spitting/squirting) is that they live in very large mounds that can reach several feet high. Each of these mounds are estimated to have a population ranging from 100,000 to over one million and there can be dozens of them with…

Ants are aliens aren't they. Or at least we might be more likely to find antlike creatures if we do find extraterrestrial life.

> Ants are aliens aren't they.

That reminds me of Phase IV. It's like an alien invasion movie, but with ants instead: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070531/

Re: How many ants live on Earth? (2022)

#36

Post by ijidak »

minitoar wrote: post #26
frantathefranta wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They specify wild mammals. Humans are like 600 megatons I think.

Wow. 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.

Re: How many ants live on Earth? (2022)

#37

Post by cgriswald »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #28

We're lucky they haven't banded together against us, I'm not sure we could win against those shear numbers!

I think the big problem would be getting rid of or containing them while maintaining the ecosystems we need for survival.

If I were ant emperor I’d attack human farms and food processing places.

Re: How many ants live on Earth? (2022)

#38

Post by pje »

mordymoop wrote: post #33

An astronomical number, but still fewer than there are stars in the known cosmos, by a factor of about 5,000,000. Even the most common forms of multicellular life are practically Silmarils in terms of rarity on the cosmic scale.

The nematode population is probably much closer to stellar figures

Re: How many ants live on Earth? (2022)

#39

Post by idlewords »

jlund-molfese wrote: post #8
de107549 wrote: post #3

Pretty crazy: "That’s 12 megatons of biomass—more than all the wild birds and mammals taken together."

I’ve always found it striking that livestock and humans are 96% of mammalian biomass. That’s a lot of cows! [0] 0. https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass

Yo mama so fat...

Re: How many ants live on Earth? (2022)

#40

Post by pavlov »

whycome wrote: post #17
picafrost wrote: post #11

This number doesn't surprise me. I live within the Arctic circle and there are a lot of wood ants [0] in my area. Among the various reasons wood ants are fascinating (aphid farming, formic acid spitting/squirting) is that they live in very large mounds that can reach several feet high. Each of these mounds are estimated to have a population ranging from 100,000 to over one million and there can be dozens of them with…

Ants are aliens aren't they. Or at least we might be more likely to find antlike creatures if we do find extraterrestrial life.

"Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky is an excellent sci-fi novel that also includes ants that were uplifted by a human terraforming experiment.

They're interesting semi-aliens because the colonies are incredibly capable in many respects but ultimately lack self-awareness, which leaves the ants open to manipulation by other uplifted species that are capable of motivated planning. The ants become like biological technology for the other species.

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