*content from Visual Capitalist; link to original*
There are around 8.7 million species on our planet. With so many species, it’s difficult to really understand just how diverse life is on Earth.
Below is a graphic that visualizes all life forms according to their biomass. It draws from research by Bar-On et al.
Key Points
Out of all life forms, plants make up a whopping 82.4% of biomass on Earth. With deforestation and climate change on the rise, many plants are in danger and Earth’s biomass will whittle away.
Trailing far behind in 2nd place is bacteria at 12.8%. These invisible life forms live almost anywhere in the most extreme of climates. The bacteria in our gut are key to maintaining good health.
Animals only make up 0.47% of all biomass, which is the second-lowest out of all the classes. This may be surprising considering how many large animals we know of. But larger species do not mean larger biomass percentages. Nearly 40% of animal biomass is composed of marine animals.
While we humans are on the top of the food chain, we only make up 0.01% of total biomass on Earth and 2.3% of all animal biomass. These small numbers underscore how much of a speck we are compared to other life forms. We must protect the ecosystems around us instead of focusing only on our needs as a species.
