In animal biomass, marine arthropods weigh the heaviest, far ahead of mammals. Humans represent only 2.3%, and only 0.01% if we take into account all of the Earth’s biomass.
This infographic, focused on animal biomass (or zoomasse), is an extract from the one published in August 2021 on Canadian site Visual Capitalist, and taken over by the american magazine Nautilus December 8.
It makes it possible to visualize the part of each group of the animal kingdom in the zoomass and thus to understand that we, the humans, do not weigh very heavy there. Even less if we compare this share to all of the terrestrial biomass, which includes, in addition to animals, bacteria, fungi, archaea, viruses, protists (unicellular organisms) and of course plants.
Out of more than 8.7 million species recorded on our planet, the plant world has more than 320,000 species of plants. Its biomass alone represents 82.4% of the terrestrial biomass. By way of comparison, the animal biomass shown here represents only 0.47% and the human species only 0.01%.