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Who would win in a fight, all of the lions or all of the ants? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

"Fun" fact: The biomass of all the ants in the world is greater than the biomass of all warm blooded (endothermic) animals combined.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Here's an excellent video where a VFX artist uses CGI tools to visualize what said biomass would look like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPoMww9x378

You can go to 6:20 if you don't care about the methodology used to calculate the mass and just wanna see the ant tidal wave moneyshot.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Absolutely, it's not even remotely a question - the ants would win. Totally and completely.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

That's kinda heccin ant tidal wave

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago

I read a while ago that humans probably have ants out-chonked since some time ago when we started gaining weight as a population.

Had to check back on this since that little factoid has stuck with me since reading it.

Per this journal from 2022, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2201550119

Integrating data from all continents and major biomes, we conservatively estimate 20 × 1015 (20 quadrillion) ants on Earth, with a total biomass of 12 megatons of dry carbon. This exceeds the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals and equals 20% of human biomass.

Because if there's anything worth getting scientific about, it's us vs the ant horde. Suck it, ants!