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A look at Earth’s biomass distributed between taxa.

Plants dominate accounting for >82% of biomass, followed by bacteria at 13%. The entire animal kingdom only makes up 0.4% & humans alone are just 0.01%. https://ourworldindata.org/life-on-earth #science #nature

Credit: Our World in Data using research by Bar-On et al. (2018). Biomass is measured in tonnes of carbon.

Humans make up just 0.01% of Earth’s life – what’s the rest?

How is life on Earth distributed across the taxonomic kingdoms? Humans make up just 0.01% of life: but we’ve had much larger impacts on shaping the animal kingdom. Livestock now outweighs wild mammals and birds ten-fold.
Our World in Data
#nature #science
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Steven Molnar
Steven Molnar
• •
Why are Canadians separate from Humans? Oh, wait, it does make sense.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Dom
Dom
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Considering that nearly half of the Animals biomass are Arthropods, we should focus on eating that as opposed to livestock. I mean, we already do for crabs and shrimps but we should eat more insects. They can taste better than most of fast food people call "food" and isn't really anything more than fat and salt.
in reply to Dom

Sheril Kirshenbaum
Sheril Kirshenbaum
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@dom I agree. Over 2 B people already eat insects globally. I really need to do an ep of Serving Up Science on this.
@Dom
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

J Mills
J Mills
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Would be interesting to see a taxonomic breakdown for Plants. Biomass of major crops like maize, soybean, wheat, rice, etc.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

myrmepropagandist
myrmepropagandist
• •
*pumping fist in the air*

Arth! Ro! Pods!
Arth! Ro! Pods!

Let's go exo-legs!
*clap*
*clap*
*clap**clap**clap*

Let's go exo-legs!
*clap*
*clap*
*clap**clap**clap*

I mean... plants are cool too. But, most of the little minds are probably ant minds.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Southern Leftist
Southern Leftist
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Our World in Data is manipulated by millionaires such as Bill Gates and his cronies.

Still, nature is pulchritudinous.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Michael Gemar
Michael Gemar
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As I recall, there’s been some findings of bacteria/archaea deep within the Earth’s crust, with the suggestion that the total biomass of these “hidden” organisms might be quite significant, rivaling that of “surface” life.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

David
David
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The terrifying part is the share of wild (non-fish, non-livestock, non-human) vertebrate animals.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

AT-AT Assault 🏳️‍⚧️
AT-AT Assault 🏳️‍⚧️
• •
Birds seem to be in danger of climate change extinction. I didn't realize there were so few of them.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Alaric
Alaric
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I wonder how they weighed all those nematodes without them squirming off?
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Sanjay Thakur
Sanjay Thakur
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Lowest has colonised the Earth and constantly destroyed the natural ecosystem .Intrigued at this puzzle of intelligence and can we claim to be most intelligent among all or others are just too evolved and their consciousness evolved at a level beyond our understanding.Who should be legitimate ruler if we go by the statistics displayed here ? Darwinian evolution from fish to monkey to human so far since advent of civilisation but why no more evolution beyond human .
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

New flyer D40LF
New flyer D40LF
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Wow. Waaaay more nematodes than I would’ve guessed. Those lil ground eels are everywhere aren’t they?
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Knud Jahnke
Knud Jahnke
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And we're still surprised that the bacteria are so upset we're using antibiotics?
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

llewelly
llewelly
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Are they including algae and other autotrophs in plants? It seems so, but I can't tell.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Sekenre :python: :c_language:
Sekenre :python: :c_language:
• •
We should strive to increase biomass of all taxa. Especially plants and fish.

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