Earth harbours 20,000,000,000,000,000 ants – and they weigh more than wild birds and mammals combined

By Mark Wong, Forrest Fellow, The University of Western Australia
Benoit Guénard, Associate professor, University of Hong Kong
François Brassard, PhD candidate, Charles Darwin University
Patrick Schultheiss, Temporary Principal Investigator, Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg
Runxi Wang, PhD candidate, University of Hong Kong
Sabine Nooten, Temporary Principal Investigator, Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg

Invertebrates are “the little things that run the world”. So researchers decided to count all the ants on Earth, to help monitor how they’re coping with environmental challenges.

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