Biomass

Have you ever wondered about how much of all the life on earth we humans make up?

It’s an interesting question with lots of different possible ways to answer it. One way is to think about the number of organisms: there are around 8 billion of us, as of 2024. What about the rest of the organisms?

Well, there are tens of trillions of bacteria living inside your body. Clearly, humans are vastly outnumbered by bacteria and archaea, collectively the most numerous microorganisms on Earth. To count all the microorganisms, we would need a one followed by thirty zeros (a billion is a one followed by nine zeros).

Our population numbers are also dwarfed by insects, the most numerous multicellular organisms (one followed by eighteen zeros).

Maybe quantity isn’t what we’re looking for, though. After all, I weigh 155 pounds, give or take, and a housefly weighs around 12 milligrams. To get to 155 pounds, you would need over 5 million flies to make up one me.

Maybe weight (or mass, more specifically) …