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How many ants are crawling on Earth? Researchers estimate

Researchers have made the most thorough assessment to date of the global population of ants - insects that have colonized almost everywhere on the planet - and the estimated total is a mind-blowing 20 quadrillion of them, or approximately 2.5 million for every human.

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"I was amazed that the ants' biomass was higher than that of wild mammals and birds combined, and that it reaches 20% of the human biomass. That gives you an understanding of the scale of their impact," said insect ecologist and study co-lead author Sabine Nooten, also of the University of Würzburg and University of Hong Kong. "I find the enormous diversity of ants fascinating. They can be tiny or huge and show the most bizarre adaptations," Nooten added, citing a widespread ant genus called Strumigenys, known for long mouthparts with spikes used to hunt small invertebrates. The researchers based their analysis on 489 studies of ant populations spanning every continent where ants live.