You might be surprised to see world population counter. There are 8 billion (and rapidly growing) humans on Earth. That’s a lot. And of course, humans also have a huge influence. However, we are not the most abundant animal on the planet. In fact, mammals are at the bottom of the list, with only about 5,500 named species.
However, scientists have identified around 1 million species of insects, and explain that there are many more that have yet to be identified. scott hoffman blackan entomologist and executive director of the Xerces Society, an organization dedicated to invertebrate conservation. Experts conservatively estimate that between 4 million and perhaps 7 million species remain unidentified.
Yes, the most abundant land animals are definitely insects. But which one?
The most abundant animal in the world
According to a well-told anecdote, a British evolutionary biologist JBS Haldane He was once asked what he could say about the nature of God based on his study of the natural world. Haldane dryly replies that the author is “unusually fond of beetles.” This story is probably false, but it’s so entertaining that it’s been repeated for decades.
And in fact there is teeth It is estimated that there are many beetles on earth, Approximately 350,000 described species. However, they are not the most abundant land animals. There are many ways to analyze this, but analyzing either animal population or biomass (basically weight) almost certainly gives the honor to the ants.
Author of the widely cited “2022” study They estimated that there were 20 quintillion (20 followed by 15 zeros) ants on Earth, but they were being conservative. Or, if this helps you understand the vast numbers of ants, their total biomass is greater than the biomass of all wild birds and mammals combined, and about the biomass of all humans on Earth. That’s 20 percent. study.
read more: 35 million years ago, an army of ancient ants once raided Europe
Why are there so many ants in the world?
philip burden I study ants (and other social insects) at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He says that the ants’ amazing success is probably due to the fact that they are social animals.
“When you get out of this single system where one individual forages and forages alone, you start to have competition and you get huge colonies with tens of millions of workers,” he says.
Black added that ants are adapted to almost every environment, from high mountains to deserts, and have a variety of strategies for survival. They also have a very adaptable diet. Many ants are predators that eat other animals, but they’re good at it because they cooperate to obtain food. Baden said some ants eat seeds, while others eat them and grow fungi, essentially farming.
This ability to adapt to any situation is probably why ants have survived. Ants were also present during the Cretaceous period, Baden said, but they accounted for only 1 percent of all insects researchers have found in amber and fossil deposits. But then Disappearance of KT At the end of the Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago, ants made up at least 10 percent and sometimes 30 percent of all insects.
And he goes on to say, “If you go to the rainforest, the biomass of ants and termites today is greater than not just all insects, but all insects and all vertebrates combined.”
read more: 6 unusual features in animal evolution
Will ants be able to survive better than humans in a mass extinction event?
Many experts claim we are in the midst of it. 6th mass extinction. If so, how do ants survive? Black says it’s almost certainly better than humans. In past extinctions, insects survived when many other groups did not, he says. Is it Ali specifically?
Baden points out that many species of ants do very well in areas that have been disturbed by humans, such as golf courses and lawns.
“I think we’re going to see, and we’ll continue to see, a small number of ant species that are very well suited to disturbed habitats continue to be really successful. Instead of finding tens or hundreds of species, you might only find a few species, but those species will be very abundant in that location,” Baden says.
Next time you find ants in your cupboard, be respectful.
read more: What will happen if small insects become extinct? Should we even care?
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Avery Hart is a freelance science journalist. In addition to contributing to Discover, she is a regular contributor to a variety of outlets, both print and online, including National Geographic, Science News Explores, Medscape, and WebMD. She is the author of Bullet With Your Name on It: What You Will Simply Die From and What You Can Do About It (Clerisy Press 2007), as well as several other books for young readers. Avery entered the world of journalism while in college, writing for the school newspaper and editing the student nonfiction magazine. She writes about all areas of science, but has a particular interest in neuroscience, the science of consciousness, and AI, interests she developed while earning a degree in philosophy.
