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    HomeMilitaryHumanity's Weight Dwarfs That of Wild Mammals, Revealing Stark Nature Conservation Challenges

    Humanity’s Weight Dwarfs That of Wild Mammals, Revealing Stark Nature Conservation Challenges

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    A striking new study has revealed the stark reality of our planet’s wildlife: the collective mass of Earth’s terrestrial wild animals, including elephants, bison, deer, and tigers, is currently less than 10% of the total weight of human beings inhabiting the planet.

    The research, led by scientists from Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, presents an alarming picture of the balance—or imbalance—between domesticated animals and the wildlife that remains.

    Published in the reputable journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the findings are a wake-up call to the state of the Earth’s wild mammals.

    It seems our world, replete with great plains and dense jungles showcased in stunning nature documentaries, faces a more somber reality where these iconic animals are becoming an increasingly vanishing spectacle.

    The study meticulously estimated the biomass of both terrestrial and marine wild mammals, providing us with a numerical mirror reflecting humanity’s footprint.

    The global mass of humanity tallies at an overwhelming 390 million tonnes, while the biomass of our wild terrestrial counterparts is a mere 22 million tonnes.

    Domesticated animals add a colossal 630 million tonnes to the scale. The implications are stark; pigs alone outweigh the entirety of wild land mammals nearly two-fold.

    But the dominance is not solely on land; marine mammals too have seen their numbers overshadowed.

    The combined weight of marine mammals was estimated to be approximately 40 million tonnes.

    Fin whales claimed the top spot for the largest biomass, followed by sperm whales and humpback whales in second and third places, respectively.

    The top contributors to wild land mammal biomass reveal our influence on the natural world.

    Species like the white-tailed deer in North America and the wild boar in Europe and Asia are burgeoning, ironically due to their adaptability to human-modified environments and the eradication of their natural predators by humans.

    It is a narrative of our times. Domestic dogs, one of humanity’s oldest companions, have a combined weight comparable to all wild terrestrial mammals, and domestic cats weigh nearly twice as much as all African savanna elephants.

    The distribution of biomass across mammalian orders is telling. Even-toed ungulates (hoofed mammals) hold nearly half of the total terrestrial biomass, and a mere ten species comprise about 40% of it.

    The white-tailed deer, once an animated icon in Disney’s Bambi, now leads in biomass, followed by the wild boar and African elephant.

    Relevant articles:
    The global biomass of wild mammals, National Institutes of Health (NIH) (.gov)
    Earth’s wild land mammals now make up just 2% of the mammal kingdom, Q-files
    The Weight of Responsibility: Biomass of Livestock Dwarfs That of Wild Mammals – Environment, Weizmann Wonder Wander
    ‘A wake-up call’: total weight of wild mammals less than 10% of humanity’s, The Guardian

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