news hardware Finally we know how many ants inhabit the earth
In France, almost seven out of ten French people are entomophobic. A common phobia directly linked to a variety of very popular small beasts. Recently, thanks to an extensive study, scientists have tried to estimate their number, and as you will see, the result is almost unimaginable.
What is Entomophobia?
In the family of phobias, we want… entomophobia! As we explained to you in our Chapô, almost seven out of ten French people are entomophobic. But what is entomophobia? To better understand this term, we offer the definition given by the site The internet user
Psychic pathology corresponding to an excessive and unfounded fear of insects, a small invertebrate that generally has antennae, movable legs, and sometimes wings. – The internet user
While many people suffer from more common phobias such as thalassophobia (fear of the seabed), arachnophobia (fear of spiders), ochlophobia (fear of crowds), or agoraphobia (fear of public places), few people are familiar with the name insect phobia. But who can say they’ve never seen anyone flinch or panic at the sight of an ant or a bug?
In this article, we’ll mainly focus on ants and their numbers on Earth, as that’s exactly the idea that a group of researchers from the University of Hong Kong had. It’s no secret, but with their almost monarchical societies, amazing biodiversity (30,000) and fascinating anthills, ants are among the world’s most popular insects.. Present all over the world and with strong colonies sometimes reaching millions of members, these insects have been roaming the earth for many millennia.
A number that almost leaves us speechless
So that you can see how widespread ants are on our planet, are you just saying that their biomass (= mass of matter) is greater than that of humans. Just that. It’s all well and good to know, but how many ants inhabit the planet? Difficult to say given the protagonists’ ridiculous size, but a group of determined researchers attempted to estimate their numbers.
We owe this study to a group of researchers from the University of Hong Kong who drew on no fewer than 489 studies to come to a convincing conclusion on this question.
It’s unimaginable. For example, we simply cannot imagine 20 trillion ants in a single heap. It just doesn’t work. – Patrick Schultheiss, researcher at the University of Würzburg in Germany, who participated in the study.
In addition, the group that conducted the research also found that the total mass of ants living on Earth would be equivalent to 12 megatons of carbon.. All this to say that these results are completely insane, even if they are only an estimate, and luckily. Imagine how much work it would have taken to count the ants one by one… an impossible mission.
