Crops cover some 12 percent of Earth’s land surface, and account for more than one-third of terrestrial biomass.
Scientists estimate that 83 percent of the terrestrial biosphere is under direct human influence. In short, humans are Earth’s great omnivore, and our omnivorous nature can only be understood at global scales. Put another way: For every non-human mammal sharing our niche, there are more than 4,000 of us. A more appropriate comparison can be made between humans and other apex predators, which is precisely the ecological role humans evolved to play, and which - beneath our civilized veneer - we still are.Īccording to a back-of-the-envelope calculation, there are about 1.7 million other top-level, land-dwelling, mammalian predators on Earth. 00018 percent, and we use 20 percent.Īnts and krill and bacteria occupy an entirely different ecological level.
Those are interesting factoids, but they belie a larger point.
Some may note that, in a big-picture biological sense, humanity has rivals: In total biomass, ants weigh as much as we do, oceanic krill weigh more than both of us combined, and bacteria dwarf us all.
