One Of The Many Advantages Of Living In The UK Is Ants,

that is we do not have them indoors,

photograph Zainichi Gaikokujin, on the flip side we did have a few infestations when we lived in Thailand, but these were short lived, with a local ant poison that they took to their nest which made sure that colony did not return, so here is the thing, how many ants are in the world today? that was a question that Mark Wong wanted to have an answer to, so he set himself a goal, count all the ants in the world, but why the interest in ants? aside from tunnelling seeds into the ground for dinner and accidentally blooming plants from their leftovers, ants are integral to maintaining our ecosystem's delicate balance, they're prey for larger animals, predators of many others, soil churners and scavengers, to name just a few of their accolades, so considering the sheer amount of them living on Earth, they're a pretty big deal, "This enormous bulk of ants on Earth heavily underscores their ecological value, as ants can punch above their weight in providing key ecological functions," Wong said, but he did not do the count by himself, He surveyed 489 studies of ant populations from around the world, and extrapolating the information, he came up with a number, 20 quadrillion, give or take a few, that's 20,000,000,000,000,000, "We further estimate that the world's ants collectively constitute about 12 megatons of dry carbon," said Wong, an ecologist at the University of Western Australia's School of Biological Sciences. "Impressively, this exceeds the biomass of all the world's wild birds and mammals combined." you can read the full study here, well now we know how many ants there are, how about the other insect that people find so annoying? here is the question, how many flies are there in the world? answers on a postcard please!