“Fun” fact: The biomass of all the ants in the world is greater than the biomass of all warm blooded (endothermic) animals combined.
Here’s an excellent video where a VFX artist uses CGI tools to visualize what said biomass would look like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPoMww9x378
You can go to 6:20 if you don’t care about the methodology used to calculate the mass and just wanna see the ant tidal wave moneyshot.
I read a while ago that humans probably have ants out-chonked since some time ago when we started gaining weight as a population.
Had to check back on this since that little factoid has stuck with me since reading it.
Per this journal from 2022, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2201550119
Integrating data from all continents and major biomes, we conservatively estimate 20 × 1015 (20 quadrillion) ants on Earth, with a total biomass of 12 megatons of dry carbon. This exceeds the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals and equals 20% of human biomass.
Because if there’s anything worth getting scientific about, it’s us vs the ant horde.
