Contact Us

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.

  • 6
  • 7
"Our dataset represents a massive collecting effort of thousands of scientists. We were then able to extrapolate the number of ants for different regions of the world and estimate their total global number and biomass," Schultheiss said. Tropical regions were found to harbor many more ants than other regions, with forests and drylands boasting more ants than urban areas. "There are certain parts of the world where we have little data and we cannot reach reliable estimates for all continents. Africa is one such example. We have long known that it is a very ant-rich continent but also very under-studied," Schultheiss said.