For a long time, scientists did not know how many ants there are on Earth. And in an age where insect mortality is a major concern, this was a problem. After examining 1,300 places on Earth, Patrick Schultheiss at the University of Hong Kong has now come up with an estimate. 20,000,000,000,000,000 ants. 20 and then fifteen zeros. 2.5 million ants per person on earth. There are now almost 8 billion people. There are 2.5 million ants per person on earth. Illustration: ALEXANDER SLOTTEN / news The total mass of ants on earth weighs the same as the pyramid in Giza, times twice. All ants on the planet weigh the same as two Egyptian pyramids. Illustration: ALEXANDER SLOTTEN / news – There is so much to say about ants. They are very similar to us humans, says Frode Ødegaard, associate professor at the NTNU Science Museum. He is an expert on insects and is one of the authors of the book Ants in Norway. Frode Ødegaard is an ant researcher and has written a book about the ants in Norway. Photo: Monika Blikås / news He explains that ants live in social societies and have a division of labor just like us. Ants grow mushrooms, keep livestock and distribute work tasks. Illustration: ALEXANDER SLOTTEN / news – They do farming by growing mushrooms, and they keep livestock, they are farmers. They milk aphids for honeydew. Forest ants climb the trees and milk the aphids, says the ant expert. Ants keep livestock and milk aphids. Illustration: ALEXANDER SLOTTEN / news Ødegaard explains that an anthill functions like a factory, where the different workers have different tasks in society. Some run childcare, some run the cemetery. You have scouts and defenders and foragers. And they move up in the system as they get older. The sixth mass extinction – We lose between 1,000 and 10,000 different species of insects a year due to the destruction of nature, says Ødegaard. He describes the period we are living through as the sixth mass extinction. We are losing an area of tropical rainforest the size of the whole of Norway within three years. – So then you have to expect that a lot will disappear and will never come back, he says. He is concerned about the consequences of losing ant species through this extinction process. Three important functions – The first important function is seed dispersal in plants. Many plants are adapted to ants in that they produce a kind of candy bag around their seeds that the ants become interested in and which they take with them. But it throws the seed away somewhere, and so the seeds are spread. The blue weed depends on ants to reproduce. Illustration: ALEXANDER SLOTTEN / news Ants are also predators and contribute quite strongly to regulating other insect species and pests. – The last thing is that they contribute to the release of nutrients. It is said that on a global basis they turn over more soil than the earthworm field. They are very important in metabolism, Ødegaard explains. – They release nutrients so that you can recycle the substances in nature.
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There are 2.5 million ants per person on earth – news Norway – Overview of news from various parts of the country
