How many ants are there in the world?
A 2022 synthesis in PNAS put the number of ants alive at any moment at roughly 20 quadrillion — 20 followed by fifteen zeros. That figure comes with a stated uncertainty of a factor of two or so, which for a global animal census is unusually tight. The same work estimated ant biomass at about 12 megatons of dry carbon. Earlier textbook guesses ranged from 10 thousand trillion to 10 million trillion, so the modern number sits near the bottom of what people used to assume.
How the figure is arrived at
Researchers pooled 489 standardised field studies that had physically counted ants in a measured area — pitfall traps and leaf-litter samples for ground ants, canopy fogging for tree ants — worked out ants per square metre for each biome, then multiplied by the global area of that biome. Tropical forest and savanna dominate the total, which is why sampling those well matters more than sampling anywhere else.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 10,000,000,000,000,000
- High estimate
- 30,000,000,000,000,000
- Spread
- 3.0× between the bounds
Other living things and the natural world counts
- How many people are there in the world? about 8.2 billion
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? roughly 7.5 quintillion on the world's beaches
- How many trees are there in the world? about 3 trillion
- How many insects are there? about 10 quintillion
- How many species are there? about 8.7 million
- How many people have ever lived? about 117 billion
- How many drops of water are there in the ocean? about 27 septillion
- How many fish are there in the sea? somewhere between 3 trillion and 100 trillion — nobody knows
- How many species are endangered? more than 45,000 assessed as threatened
- How many bees are there in the world? roughly 2 trillion managed honey bees
- How many birds are there in the world? about 50 billion wild birds
- How many bacteria are there on Earth? about 5 nonillion
- How many earthquakes are there each year? about 20,000 located a year — around 55 a day
- How many chickens are there in the world? about 26 billion alive at any moment
Common questions
- How many ants are there in the world?
- about 20 quadrillion
- How is that estimated?
- Researchers pooled 489 standardised field studies that had physically counted ants in a measured area — pitfall traps and leaf-litter samples for ground ants, canopy fogging for tree ants — worked out ants per square metre for each biome, then multiplied by the global area of that biome. Tropical forest and savanna dominate the total, which is why sampling those well matters more than sampling anywhere else.
Related pages
- How many people are there in the world? about 8.2 billion
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? roughly 7.5 quintillion on the world's beaches
- How many trees are there in the world? about 3 trillion
- How many insects are there? about 10 quintillion
- How many species are there? about 8.7 million
- How many people have ever lived? about 117 billion
- How many drops of water are there in the ocean? about 27 septillion
- How many fish are there in the sea? somewhere between 3 trillion and 100 trillion — nobody knows
- How many stars are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many countries are there in the world? Things people built
- How many bones are in the human body? The human body
- How many stars are there in the Milky Way? Space and the universe
- How many atoms are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many galaxies are there? Space and the universe
Sources
- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place