Ant

An ant is a small social insect that lives in colonies. A 2022 study estimated that there are about twenty quadrillion ants on Earth, that is 20,000,000,000,000,000, or around two and a half million for every person.^[1] The study did not count them one at a time, which is the only reason it was published in the same century.

How many

The same study estimated that, taken together, all the ants on Earth weigh more than all the wild birds and wild mammals put together. Ants are very small, but there are a great many of them, which is also the principle behind sand.^[2]

If every ant on Earth formed a single queue, it would reach round the Earth many thousands of times. Nobody has suggested this to the ants, who are thought to be busy.

Strength

Many ants can carry several times their own body weight, and some can carry far more. This is mostly because they are small: strength goes up more slowly than weight as an animal gets bigger, so a human-sized ant would not be strong at all, and would be very worried about it.

Ants do not have lungs. Air enters the body through small holes along the sides, called spiracles, and travels through tiny tubes. The ant, in short, breathes through its sides and has never once been out of breath.

See also

• Sand – the other thing there is a lot of
• Queue – something ants already do
• List of things that are heavy – where all the ants together would go
• Venus flytrap – the ant's least favourite plant

References

1. Colony, C. (2022). Twenty Quadrillion, Roughly. Anthill Press.
2. Tally, T. (1998). “We Did Not Count Them All”. Journal of Estimates 2.5: 1.
3. Spiracle, S. (2010). Breathing Through the Sides. Small Books.