4.1: Humans represent only a small fraction of animal biomass
- Page ID
- 25879
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Over the relatively short period of human history, major innovations, such as the domestication of livestock, the adoption of an agricultural lifestyle, and the industrial revolution, have allowed for dramatic increases in human population and have had radical ecological effects on global biomass [6] (See Impacts of agriculture on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning).
- Today, human biomass (≈0.06 Gt C) and livestock biomass (≈0.1 Gt C, dominated by cattle and pigs) far exceed that of wild mammals, whose mass is ≈0.007 Gt C.
- The same is true for wild and domesticated birds, for which the biomass of domesticated poultry (≈0.005 Gt C, dominated by chickens) is about three times higher than that of wild birds (≈0.002 Gt C).
- In fact, the biomass of humans and livestock exceeds that of all vertebrates combined, except fish.
- Although humans and livestock dominate the mammalian biomass, they represent only a small fraction of the ≈2 Gt C of animal biomass, which primarily includes arthropods (≈1 Gt C), followed by fish (≈0.7 Gt C).