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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Vishwam Sankaran

There are about 20000 trillion ants on Earth, new study estimates

Yannick Wurm & Emeline Favreau

There are about 20 quadrillion ants living on Earth – “a 20 with 15 zeros” — showed findings from a new study.

This figure corresponds to about a fifth of all the mass of every human on Earth, said the research, published in the journal PNAS on Monday.

The study reviewed a range of existing studies on ants, narrowed the research down to about 500 suitable papers and combined their data to arrive at this figure, which is “2-20 times higher than previous estimates”.

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