The most important result is that plants are the overwhelming winner in the “who weighs the most” contest, coming in at 450 gigatons. Microbes (which include bacteria, archaea, and most protists) come in next at around 81 gigatons. Animals (which includes insects, by the way), barely matter, weighing in at a mere 2 gigatons. It’s also worth noting that these plants are mostly on land. That means that the continents beat the oceans in terms of biospheric mass.
Comment on Swoon
Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Even in terms of pure mass, the dominant species is actually ants: Estimates for biomass show humans at 60 megatons and ants at 70 megatons.
agent_flounder@lemmy.world 3 months ago
fckreddit@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
So, you mean that if ants decide to invade us, we are essentially screwed.
OpenStars@startrek.website 3 months ago
threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
I feel like I could fight 1.167 my body mass in ants. We have shoes. And fire.
Ulvain@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Idk… there’s about 150,000 ants per pound. Let’s call it 200 pounds of ants, so 30,000,000 ants attacking you all at once?
Even with an incredibly efficient stomping methodology, you’d let some through, which would start crawling on and in you rather quickly.
After a few thousand ants (a fraction of a fraction of the total mind you) get inside your ears, nose, butthole and urethra, biting, chewing and slicing one micro-cut at a time, I’m fairly sure you’re out of commission, going stark mad and opening the way for the remaining millions of ants to quite systematically kill you and methodically cut you in small carryable pieces to bring back to the nest.
But hey, hopefully shoes and soap will help ;)
threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
True, if both the ants and I are naked and get zero prep time, the ants would probably win. But if I have a few minutes to prepare some buckets of soapy water and tuck my pants into my socks, I think I’d have a decent chance.
exocrinous@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Someone read Worm
SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
EDF! EDF!
SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Bring it on. The EDF deploys!
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
All y’all talking about ants…our livestock weighs more than us. Thats insane to me.
Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Ah, yeah, I’ve heard similar numbers before, so while it’s still always a bit of a surprise when I see another such number, I kind of expect to be surprised. 🙃
Another set of numbers from a presentation I watched earlier is that in 2023, Germany (with our ~80 million citizens) slaughtered:
- 47.9 million pigs, cows, sheep, goats and horses.
- 702.2 million chicken, turkeys and ducks.
I don’t know, how much of that is being exported, but it still feels like we’re eating our own weight in meat every year, which probably fits in with that biomass number.
As source, it lists our Federal Statistical Office, so that should be this data: www-genesis.destatis.de/genesis/online?language=e…
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Johandea@feddit.nu 3 months ago
Ants aren’t a species. Ants is a family of insects, containing over 20 000 species. Just, in case anyone was wondering…
Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
I knew typing out the word “species” in a science community would get me into trouble… 🫠
arin@lemmy.world 3 months ago
No trouble just education
Gilles_D@feddit.de 3 months ago
For some that is troubling