this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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Science Memes

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Swoon (mander.xyz)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 53 points 8 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Ants aren't a species. Ants is a family of insects, containing over 20000 species. Just, in case anyone was wondering...

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I knew typing out the word "species" in a science community would get me into trouble... 🫠

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

No trouble just education

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

For some that is troubling

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Well, in this case, I was being facetious. I don't actually perceive it as trouble...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I know that, I was not referring to you personally

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago

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.

https://bigthink.com/13-8/earth-biomass-distribution/

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (4 children)

So, you mean that if ants decide to invade us, we are essentially screwed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

EDF! EDF!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I feel like I could fight 1.167 my body mass in ants. We have shoes. And fire. And soap.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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 ;)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What's becoming more and more clear is that you truly have no grasp of what 30 million ants en masse truly is. 😅🤮

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

All you've got to do is maintain a little distance from them, and I can easily outrun an ant. Step on the closest 500, take a step back. Repeat forever.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I think you need a flamethrower in the scenario...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Thirty.

Million.

The ambulatory physics of that volume is firmly in the fluid dynamics territory, not a mere creepy crawly carpet. 😳

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But what if each each ant had some buckets of soapy water, pants and socks?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I still fancy my chances. I don't breathe through my skin.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Someone read Worm

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Bring it on. The EDF deploys!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

All y’all talking about ants…our livestock weighs more than us. Thats insane to me.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 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: https://www-genesis.destatis.de/genesis/online?language=en&sequenz=tabelleErgebnis&selectionname=41331-0001