The human share on the planet was only about 0.01 percent.
To obtain data, scientists conducted a census of all animal species with an estimate of their biomass and geographical distribution.
American biologists have carried out a quantitative analysis of the global distribution of biomass on Earth. It turned out that the total weight of carbon in all living organisms was 550 billion tons (or 550 gigatons). The article was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists have found that 450 gigatons (80% of the total mass) of carbon comes from plants. Another 70 gigatons of carbon (about 13%) is found in bacterial cells, and 12 gigatons (2%) in fungi.
The whole animal kingdom has two gigatons, of which half are insects, arachnids and crustaceans. As for humans, their total weight was 0.06 gigatons (about 0.01%), which is slightly more than the mass of carbon of the bodies of all wild mammals. But domestic animals (cattle, pigs and others) in total weigh 20 times more than wild mammals.
To obtain these data, scientists conducted a kind of census of all animal species with an estimate of their biomass and geographical distribution. They were searched for in topical scientific articles and then processed using an integration scheme taking into account the geographical distribution of species. As a quantitative indicator of biomass, scientists used information on the mass of carbon that falls on different taxa (that is, the consideration did not take into account, for example, the mass of water).
Collectively, scientists have spent three years calculating the biomass of each living thing. At first, they intended to find the total amount of protein on the planet, but they had difficulty in assessing the mass and composition of soil microorganisms.
GRIGORY PUSHKAREV
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