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Study finds there are 2.5 million ants per human on Earth, with a biomass larger than all bird and mammals combined

The research was based on 489 studies, spanning all continents, biomes, and habitats. Using this data, the researchers estimated the total number of ants to be 20 quadrillions.

TN Science Desk

Updated Sep 21, 2022, 10:47 IST

Study finds there are 25 million ants per human on Earth with a biomass larger than all bird and mammals combined

While we have all wondered how many Ants are there on Earth, Scientists now have an estimate and it's mind-boggling. A new study puts the number to be around 20 quadrillion ants on Earth, roughly around 2.5 million ants for every human.

“Anyone who’s looked at ants and realized there are lots of them has probably wondered how many there may be in total – it’s just a question that’s on people’s minds,” says Patrick Schultheiss at the University of Hong Kong, who co-led the study with his colleague Sabine Nooten at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg in Germany.

The research was based on 489 studies, spanning all continents, biomes, and habitats. Using this data, the researchers estimated the total number of ants to be 20 quadrillions.

The total biomass of this global ant population – the collective weight of carbon in all individuals – is about 12 million tonnes. This is more than wild birds and mammals combined, which have total biomass of 2 million tonnes and 7 million tonnes, respectively. Humans, by comparison, have total biomass of 60 million tonnes.

The researchers noted that the abundances of ground-dwelling ants are strongly concentrated in tropical and subtropical regions but vary substantially across habitats. The density of leaf-litter ants is highest in forests, while the numbers of actively ground-foraging ants are highest in arid regions.

Previous estimates of the number of ants on Earth were “essentially educated guesses” that extrapolated from ant densities measured in one or two locations, says Schultheiss. The latest analysis aimed to be more accurate by looking at studies from all continents and written in different languages.

"Our results provide a crucial baseline for exploring environmental drivers of ant-abundance patterns and for tracking the responses of insects to environmental change."

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