The abundance, biomass, and distribution of ants on Earth(pnas.org)
pnas.org
The abundance, biomass, and distribution of ants on Earth
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2201550119
24 comments
I planted a cherry tree and entered the wonderful world of ants.
Aphids come. Ants come and place a Badass Ant Bouncer on each cluster of leaves.
They stop the ladybugs coming and eating the aphids.
The ants then essentially ‘farm’ the aphids by letting them grow and consuming their sticking goodness.
It’s amazing. Obviously we need to get rid of ants and introduce the ladybugs to help out cherry tree.
I am sure there is a natural way to do this but I am obsessed by their collective consciousness.
It’s amazing. Obviously we need to get rid of ants and introduce the ladybugs to help out cherry tree.
I am sure there is a natural way to do this but I am obsessed by their collective consciousness.
How come you love ants so much?
I enjoy their shape and simplicity.
I find awe in the way they interact and accomplish tasks as a whole colony that would be impossible for any single individual. And how some species have developed complex, specialized behaviours from the various Acromyrmex species that farm fungi or the genus of Solenopsis that build bridges over water. And they're fascinating to watch!
The idea that a single individual may not have the neurological framework to manage these complex behaviours that enable colonies to remember and optimize paths to sources of food over time is fascinating.
Formica Rufus! They have a caste system of workers. They farm aphids and plants, they have hunters, and they have builders. They build huge mounts out of deciduous and coniferous plant material around fallen trees. And yet rigid seeming as they are there have been observations where individuals within a caste that prefer certain kinds of tasks over others.
I really like spiders too but ants were my first fascination and I still really enjoy them. My kids and I love to catch and identify queens of various species in our area during nuptial flights. It's a lot of fun... sort of like real-like Pokemon.
I find awe in the way they interact and accomplish tasks as a whole colony that would be impossible for any single individual. And how some species have developed complex, specialized behaviours from the various Acromyrmex species that farm fungi or the genus of Solenopsis that build bridges over water. And they're fascinating to watch!
The idea that a single individual may not have the neurological framework to manage these complex behaviours that enable colonies to remember and optimize paths to sources of food over time is fascinating.
Formica Rufus! They have a caste system of workers. They farm aphids and plants, they have hunters, and they have builders. They build huge mounts out of deciduous and coniferous plant material around fallen trees. And yet rigid seeming as they are there have been observations where individuals within a caste that prefer certain kinds of tasks over others.
I really like spiders too but ants were my first fascination and I still really enjoy them. My kids and I love to catch and identify queens of various species in our area during nuptial flights. It's a lot of fun... sort of like real-like Pokemon.
Proper awesome. Look closely and the world will inspire.
I really enjoyed reading "Tales from the Ant World" by Edward O. Wilson. So fascinating!
> This exceeds the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals and equals 20% of human biomass.
So humans are not mammals anymore?
So humans are not mammals anymore?
> Our global map of ant abundance expands our understanding of the geography of ant diversity and provides a baseline for predicting ants’ responses to worrying environmental changes that currently impact insect biomass.
Would it be possible to see that map without shelling out the $10? The people need to know!!!
Would it be possible to see that map without shelling out the $10? The people need to know!!!
“How many ants are there in the world?” -Google Interviewer
I think Google has now mostly stopped with the brain teaser questions but I could absolutely imagine this being one back in 2010 or so!
I think Google has now mostly stopped with the brain teaser questions but I could absolutely imagine this being one back in 2010 or so!
That's when I interviewed and it wasn't anything like that. Just straight up algos and data structures.
I believe those came out of microsoft interview questions from the 90s? Or at least that's how they were referred to, maybe it was just a meme.
I believe those came out of microsoft interview questions from the 90s? Or at least that's how they were referred to, maybe it was just a meme.
Somewhere there is a pissed off engineer who said 4 quadrillion in their interview only to be told their answer is implausible.
I never saw any evidence that Google ever did this, at least at scale.
This was, I believe, a Microsoft interview practice. Questions such as "how many golf balls can you fit in a bus?" and "how many piano tuners are in Chicago?"
Google engineering interviewing doesn't work this way and I don't think it ever did.
This was, I believe, a Microsoft interview practice. Questions such as "how many golf balls can you fit in a bus?" and "how many piano tuners are in Chicago?"
Google engineering interviewing doesn't work this way and I don't think it ever did.
Yeah that was Microsoft.
Also Edison, General Electric early on (like lightbulb era), had (according to one source, but it makes sense) like a prototype of an IQ test, tested memory and general knowledge. Basically how much you had read. By that point America had ample libraries thanks to Carnegie, so it was fair, before that there was no way.
Makes sense since Edison and Gates dropped out. And back then college dropouts were too educated, so for instance JP Morgan did a year in college, traveled a bit and that completed his education. I dropped out recently (technically an impasse, glitch meant I couldn't enroll again) and with that my education is complete. But back then? Dude nobody finished high school, Ford didn't, Wright Brothers said eh, like back then if you went to college you were badly overeducated.
So the "how many piano tuners are there in Chicago" question is a sanitized version of "how many kilotons of TNT did this nuclear bomb yield?". Fermi problem, I think it's called, and Fermi was great at it, got it to within a factor of 2. Wright Brothers also nailed it very well, like got 1% margins on admittedly easier math than the bomb, but with their other invention, the wind tunnel, and very very low resources initially. So the piano tuners sounds like a stupid question, otherwise it would require that special nuke clearance, get real. And it's the same thought process.
Also Edison, General Electric early on (like lightbulb era), had (according to one source, but it makes sense) like a prototype of an IQ test, tested memory and general knowledge. Basically how much you had read. By that point America had ample libraries thanks to Carnegie, so it was fair, before that there was no way.
Makes sense since Edison and Gates dropped out. And back then college dropouts were too educated, so for instance JP Morgan did a year in college, traveled a bit and that completed his education. I dropped out recently (technically an impasse, glitch meant I couldn't enroll again) and with that my education is complete. But back then? Dude nobody finished high school, Ford didn't, Wright Brothers said eh, like back then if you went to college you were badly overeducated.
So the "how many piano tuners are there in Chicago" question is a sanitized version of "how many kilotons of TNT did this nuclear bomb yield?". Fermi problem, I think it's called, and Fermi was great at it, got it to within a factor of 2. Wright Brothers also nailed it very well, like got 1% margins on admittedly easier math than the bomb, but with their other invention, the wind tunnel, and very very low resources initially. So the piano tuners sounds like a stupid question, otherwise it would require that special nuke clearance, get real. And it's the same thought process.
These useless riddles were intended to show problem solving. Even if you didn't know obscure trivia about piano tuning, New York, or buses, you could pass if you answered good enough.
And that's how the Windows Update team was selected /s
And that's how the Windows Update team was selected /s
Sounds like what they are looking for is if one knows about Fermi estimation. Here's a (somewhat annoying) short video about it using an example, with a timestamp to skip the intro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YzvupOX8Is&t=89s
Precisely. I believe some departments would benefit from being proficient at this, but every developer? Most are not system architects.
BTW, the "See also" section in Wikipedia is funny, it even includes the spherical cow concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem#See_also
BTW, the "See also" section in Wikipedia is funny, it even includes the spherical cow concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem#See_also
Yeah, it’s the same reasoning as, “How much disk space would we need to make a Gmail clone with 100 million users?”
Just link it to climate change and you can get free money to solve it now.
Pretty sure half of them are in my yard.
I recall some factoid circulating a while back that stated that ants outweighed humans 8:1; this is saying that humans outweigh ants 5:1.
And a year or so ago, I remember reading an article refuting it; pointing out there would have to be something like 100M ants for each human for this to be true.
Here's an article indicating ants have more mass: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/11/03/141946751...
If I just killed 3, how would I update their census?
That reminds me of a joke...
A family is getting a tour around a museum. The tour guide points to a T-rex fossil and said "That dinosaur is 75 million and 4 years old". The guest says "Wow, so precise!", and the guide says "Yes, it was 75 million years old when I started, and I've been here for 4 years".
A family is getting a tour around a museum. The tour guide points to a T-rex fossil and said "That dinosaur is 75 million and 4 years old". The guest says "Wow, so precise!", and the guide says "Yes, it was 75 million years old when I started, and I've been here for 4 years".
I love it.
I guess they are on ipv6
If ants took us on one-by-one, they could rule the world.
Jack Handey:
> "I'm not afraid of insects taking over the world, and you know why? It would take about a billion ants just to AIM a gun at me, let alone fire it. And you know what I'm doing while they're aiming it at me? I just sort of slip off to the side, and then suddenly run up and kick the gun out of their hands."
Never fear, friend.
> "I'm not afraid of insects taking over the world, and you know why? It would take about a billion ants just to AIM a gun at me, let alone fire it. And you know what I'm doing while they're aiming it at me? I just sort of slip off to the side, and then suddenly run up and kick the gun out of their hands."
Never fear, friend.
Mixing the two greatest philosophers of the 20th century, Jack Handey and Mitch Hedburg: Ants are great when you're angry and want to kill 2000 of something
They can poison your food, destroy your things, bring down your home. In the chaos, civilization would collapse. Ants don't have to kill us one-on-one; they just let us kill each other.
Jack Handey was a ficticious humorous philosopher from Saturday Night Live. But you're also right.
I believe he is actually a real person! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Handey
Sooo, it seems they're living in Asimov's Foundation?
For anyone who was curious, I too had to look this up but the "dry biomass" is the mass minus moisture. I see different estimates of this. This estimate [1] estimates humanity's biomass at 60 megatons, which differs widely from this paper's estimate (which seems to be 10 megatons).
Here's a fun fact. The desnity of humans is roughly that of water (1000kg/m^3). Humans are 18% carbon so humanity's mass is 333 megatons. If we squished everyone into a sphere is would only be 860 meters across.
[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-make-110000...
Here's a fun fact. The desnity of humans is roughly that of water (1000kg/m^3). Humans are 18% carbon so humanity's mass is 333 megatons. If we squished everyone into a sphere is would only be 860 meters across.
[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-make-110000...
You could fit all of them in a cube with edge length 400 meters (1312 feet)
but how would you get them to stay still?
I just want to know how many Olympic sized swimming pools we could fill with all these ants.
If you say 9x4x3mm for an ant's volume (wild guesstimate based off carpenter ants) (which is way off for most species since they range in size from 0.75 to 52mm[1]) and an Olympic swimming pool as 50x25x2m[2], you get the pool as 2500000000000mm^2 and the ant as 108mm^2 giving an approximate count of 23150000000 or twenty three billion, one hundred and fifty million ants. Which means you'd need about 863931 pools to hold them all at that carpenter size - round up and call it 1.25M pools to hold all the world's population?
[1] https://pestsamurai.com/ant-size-chart-and-comparison/ [2] https://phinizycenter.org/olympic-swimming-pools/
[1] https://pestsamurai.com/ant-size-chart-and-comparison/ [2] https://phinizycenter.org/olympic-swimming-pools/
And for reference, 863,931 olympic pools if built in a square would be about 50km long by 25km wide
According to this link and size of the pool is 2500m3. It comes out to around 54,000 pools to fit roughly 40 quadrillion 3mm sized ants.
https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/4mohnd/requ...
https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/4mohnd/requ...
Assume a spherical ant...
Crushed or live?
I wonder if it’s even possible to fill an Olympic-sized pool with ants without crushing the ones near the bottom.
A column of ants 2M high would be about 1000 ants (assuming 2mm height for an ant). According to [1], ants range from 1mg to 150mg(!) but most commonly 5-10mg - call it 8mg as an average and your bottom ant would be supporting about 8 grams over an area of (I assumed in another comment) 9x4mm or 36mm^2 to give about (if I'm operating [2] correctly) about 0.3psi. [3] suggests that ants can lift about 5000x their own weight which should mean the bottom ant would not only be fine but could probably carry the 2M column around without any trouble...
[1] https://whatthingsweigh.com/how-much-does-an-ant-weigh/ [2] https://www.sensorsone.com/force-and-area-to-pressure-calcul... [3] https://entomologytoday.org/2014/02/11/ants-can-lift-up-to-5...
[1] https://whatthingsweigh.com/how-much-does-an-ant-weigh/ [2] https://www.sensorsone.com/force-and-area-to-pressure-calcul... [3] https://entomologytoday.org/2014/02/11/ants-can-lift-up-to-5...
If I had to do it all over again I would study social insects. Fascinating topic
What do you find fascinating about social insects? :)
That they are essentially little machines controlled by the crowd.
The question I’m interested in is the mass comparison of “all humans” to “all ants”. I mean the back-of-my-eyelids math calculates that Human-tron vs Ant-tron is in ants favor.
The abstract answers this, I believe. Human-tron is 5x as massive!
> ...a biomass of ∼12 megatons of dry carbon... equivalent to ∼20% of human biomass
Honestly the unfathomable biomass of humans creeps me out more than the biomass of ants...
> ...a biomass of ∼12 megatons of dry carbon... equivalent to ∼20% of human biomass
Honestly the unfathomable biomass of humans creeps me out more than the biomass of ants...
This picture put it into perspective for me [0].
We use most of the Earth's dry surface to feed ... What ever that picture shows.
Disclaimer: I did not check their math, but it is in the right ball park.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/p0qws3/self...
We use most of the Earth's dry surface to feed ... What ever that picture shows.
Disclaimer: I did not check their math, but it is in the right ball park.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/p0qws3/self...
"a sphere of human goo just under 1 km wide. I made a visualization of how that would look like in the middle of Central Park in NYC."
You may want to pass on that, it's right at the top of that reddit page.
You may want to pass on that, it's right at the top of that reddit page.
> We use most of the Earth's dry surface to feed
We don't even come close to using 10% of the earth's dry surface for food production, let alone most of it.
We don't even come close to using 10% of the earth's dry surface for food production, let alone most of it.
This is wrong, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, we currently use ~38% of the earths surface for agriculture.[1] Most of that is used for pastor lands. But crops alone are 10%. Now imagine how much of the earth's surface is actually suitable for agriculture and livestock. We use most of the earths surface for ourselves. In fact it's estimated that only 23% of the land on earth, excluding Antartica, is devoted to wildlife.[2]
[1] https://www.fao.org/sustainability/news/detail/en/c/1274219/ [2] https://theconversation.com/five-maps-that-reveal-the-worlds...
[1] https://www.fao.org/sustainability/news/detail/en/c/1274219/ [2] https://theconversation.com/five-maps-that-reveal-the-worlds...
And about 1/3 of earths surface is deserts. (While they're not devoid of life or agriculture, they provide very little support for flora and fauna compared to most non-desert areas).
We'll be squeezing out pretty much all remaining wildlife in a few hundred years,
We'll be squeezing out pretty much all remaining wildlife in a few hundred years,
This sounds even more terrifying than Popolac vs. Podujevo from "In the Hills, the Cities" by Clive Barker.
(spoilers) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_Blood#%22In_the_Hills...
(spoilers) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_Blood#%22In_the_Hills...
Ants are tiny. 100 grams of seeds is enough to feed a small ant family for a whole year.
Help me find my brain please you just blew it straight out my backside.
I simply am astonished that it is true: Humans are (ballpark) 2,000,000x more massive than ants.
I was thinking 100,000 range tops. They real are tiny.
I was thinking 100,000 range tops. They real are tiny.
So we can give them each their own /64 is what I'm hearing
I was hiking on Kauai recently. For 11 miles of trail, nearly every surface was covered with small, fast moving ants each separated by about 15-20cm. It was quite unnerving until we were sure they didn't bite. Having them crawl on you while sleeping wasn't my favorite though. Mind boggling to extrapolate that number to the entire forest/world.
Yay finally a good use for this website:
https://www.themeasureofthings.com/results.php?comp=weight&u...
trying to find a favorite, how about
"It's about 150,000 times as heavy as The Space Shuttle"
https://www.themeasureofthings.com/results.php?comp=weight&u...
trying to find a favorite, how about
"It's about 150,000 times as heavy as The Space Shuttle"
For once i want to say that this article needs an in infographic to visualize the numbers
There’s a summary news article here that has the infographic. The total mass of ants is one fifth of humanity.
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/09/20/de-aarde-telt-minste...
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/09/20/de-aarde-telt-minste...
I estimated 1 million ants per person which gets to 8 quadrillion which isn't a bad guess. Kind of suprised there aren't more ants.
subroutine(1)
> The latter corresponds to a biomass of ∼12 megatons of dry carbon. This exceeds the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals…
This is a nice “wow” statistic, until you look at how few wild animals are left.
https://xkcd.com/1338/
This is a nice “wow” statistic, until you look at how few wild animals are left.
https://xkcd.com/1338/
Also how that statistic has changed over the past 12,000 years or so (by Paul Chefurka, with data from Vaclav Smil):
<http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Terrestr...>
Details:
<http://peakoilbarrel.com/confessions-of-a-doomer/>
<https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/17788/how-muc...>
<http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Terrestr...>
Details:
<http://peakoilbarrel.com/confessions-of-a-doomer/>
<https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/17788/how-muc...>
Yes I've heard it summarized that land animals are ~50% our livestock and ~46% humans themselves. Leaving 4% wild animals.
Puts thoughts of living off the land, surviving a collapse of our food chain, obsoleting animal husbandry etc out the window.
Puts thoughts of living off the land, surviving a collapse of our food chain, obsoleting animal husbandry etc out the window.
> This exceeds the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals and equals 20% of human biomass.
They don’t count humans as mammals?
They don’t count humans as mammals?
humans and livestock are at least 96% of all mammals https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.h... so more interesting to not count them
I guess pets as well were excluded
I guess pets as well were excluded
I suggest anyone who is impressed by these findings reads Clifford Simak's "City". It is a very short novel. I won't spoil it for you. I'll just say that it's one of the best and most beautiful sci fi stories I've ever come across.
I'm very surprised ants biomass is not more than human biomass, we are definitely too many, livestocks biomass is also incredibly huge, much much more than wild mammals https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.h...
> we are definitely too many
Err, ok? What's the 'correct' number of humans on this planet, and who decides who gets to live and reproduce?
Err, ok? What's the 'correct' number of humans on this planet, and who decides who gets to live and reproduce?
According to Google, the size of Dallas / Fort-worth metroplex area is 9,286 square miles. That is 28,764,444,444 yards / 7 billion people = each person gets 4 square yards.
So while a 6'x6' space isn't a lot, you could fit the whole population of the earth in just one area with plenty of room around each person.
I think politics and greed are a bigger cause of starvation and pollution than population size.
So while a 6'x6' space isn't a lot, you could fit the whole population of the earth in just one area with plenty of room around each person.
I think politics and greed are a bigger cause of starvation and pollution than population size.
> I think politics and greed are a bigger cause of starvation and pollution than population size.
Interesting model. What does it tell you that starvation has been trending downward for decades?
Interesting model. What does it tell you that starvation has been trending downward for decades?
The question suggests that you expect the answer wouldn't simply be that there are counter-forces to politics and greed that are at least strong enough to make a difference. That doesn't mean that said forces don't need to overcome politics and greed in order to make starvation less common.
This reminded me of this classic: https://what-if.xkcd.com/8/
exactly, if the average CO2 footprint in rich countries were 2T/year instead of 10T/year, it would be sustainable, but currently it's not
The maximim number is a multiplication of the number of human by their average CO2 impact, and currently it's too high. The average carbon footprint per person is 7 tonnes CO2e per year. 2T might be sustainable, and achievable (with smaller vehicles and less consumerist behaviors)
No one decides about it for now, like we do for other invasive species, but we should probably start considering regulating ourselves
No one decides about it for now, like we do for other invasive species, but we should probably start considering regulating ourselves
Even though the article is about biomass and not consumption per se, I take it like a reminder the global human population (in our current state) is currently throwing the atmosphere's equilibrium off into a negative feedback loop that may render the planet uninhabitable for many - human activity has to change, otherwise it will inevitably cost (more) human lives.
That's a lot of biomass!