What's Earth's dominant species by mass?
7 hours ago
- The claim that ants' total weight equals humans is false; humans outweigh ants 5 to 1, but termites might outweigh humans.
- Antarctic krill have a biomass of 379 million tonnes, comparable to humans' 350 million tonnes.
- Cattle are the top animal species by biomass at 650 million tonnes, followed by pigs at 140 million tonnes.
- Plants dominate biomass globally, with 450 billion tons of carbon versus animals' 2 billion tons.
- Sugar cane is the top crop by harvest, over 2 billion tonnes annually, more than maize.
- Trees hold the highest biomass, with black spruce (over 11 billion tonnes) and Dahurian larch (at least 8.4 billion tonnes) as leading species.
- Black spruce alone contains nearly three times as much carbon as all animals combined.