[frantathefranta]

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]

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

[ijidak]

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.

[ahartmetz]

Pretty 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.

[darkwater]

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

[ahartmetz]

About 500 megatons. 7e9 humans * 0.075 tons/human / 1e6 tons/megaton

[nathanmcrae]

No, 600 megatons (~E12 kg) is closer. There are E10 humans and we weigh E2 kg. More precisely: 6E1 kg * 8E9 = 5.6E11

[darkwater]

Numbers are to be considered about dehydrated mass, again according to the study.

[minitoar]

Interesting. I didn’t read the study. I wonder if that favors smaller animals? Are large mammals a larger fraction water?