How many insects are there?
The figure the Smithsonian entomology department publishes is 10 quintillion — 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 — individual insects alive at any one time. It is an order-of-magnitude estimate rather than a measurement, and the honest reading is "somewhere between one and ten quintillion". About a million insect species have been described and the true number is probably five to ten times that. Insects are roughly 80% of all known animal species.
How the figure is arrived at
Scale up from counts in a small measured plot. Take insects per square metre of soil and vegetation in each habitat type, multiply by the land area of that habitat, and add. The weakness is that tropical canopies are undersampled and are also where most of the insects are, which is why the answer is quoted to the nearest power of ten.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
- High estimate
- 10,000,000,000,000,000,000
- Spread
- 10.0× 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 ants are there in the world? about 20 quadrillion
- How many trees are there in the world? about 3 trillion
- 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 insects are there?
- about 10 quintillion
- How is that estimated?
- Scale up from counts in a small measured plot. Take insects per square metre of soil and vegetation in each habitat type, multiply by the land area of that habitat, and add. The weakness is that tropical canopies are undersampled and are also where most of the insects are, which is why the answer is quoted to the nearest power of ten.
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 ants are there in the world? about 20 quadrillion
- How many trees are there in the world? about 3 trillion
- 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
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Smithsonian Institution