Human biomass movement 40 times greater than all land animals combined: study

The medium-sized gray bird, weighing only 100 g, travels 90,000 km from pole to pole every year. Thus, the tern, with its distinctive forked tail, makes the longest journey of any wild animal on the planet. Every year, two million of these birds fly from the Arctic to Antarctica. But because of this lightness, their total biomass is only 0.016 gigatons (Gt) per km per year.

The biomass movement of a given species is determined by its total biomass multiplied by the distance it actively travels in a year. For example, for African elephants that migrate miles in search of new territory or food, it is about 7 Gt/km/year.

“From a human perspective, this is similar to the biomass movement associated with international gatherings of people such as … the FIFA World Cup,” an article published recently in Ecology of nature and evolution said.

That study now reports human biomass movement at 4,000 Gt/km/year, “more than 40 times our best estimate for all wild terrestrial mammals, arthropods, and birds combined, and more than six times the upper estimate for biomass movement of all terrestrial animals combined.”

“As animals and humans move, they shape ecosystems in many ways, from the transport of nutrients and organisms to trophic effects and the physical engineering of ecosystems,” the paper says. “Therefore, mobility can serve as a specific and direct comparison between humans and animals.”

“It shows a central role that humans don’t play on earth,” said Ron Millo, a co-author of the paper and a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Hindu human “contribution”.

“It shows that our species is a planetary-scale force that is stronger than other species. It can help people understand how we really also affect our climate. It also shows that we have the power and the responsibility to take care of the land and ocean environments,” he added.

People travel long average distances of about 30 km per day, the study says, mostly using “motorized vehicles, with ~65% in cars and motorcycles, ~10% in airplanes, and ~5% in trains and subways. Two-thirds of all motorized mobility occurs in high- and upper-middle-income countries.”

​​​​​​​While human movement has increased, the number of marine animals, which the study estimates were “the largest in the living world,” has halved since 1850 thanks to industrial fishing and whaling during the Anthropocene.

Interestingly, the biomass movement of domesticated animals was found to be of the same order as that of humans, and the movement of non-dairy cattle corresponds to most of this biomass movement, the authors added.

The total biomass movement of all wild terrestrial mammals (excluding bats) was estimated at 30 Gt/km/year, with larger, more mobile animals declining the most.