World's Biomass Human vs ...

[SorellaLaBefana]

Study: The global biomass of mammals since 1850

Abstract:
Mammals are of central interest in ecology and conservation science. Here, we estimate the trajectory of mammal biomass globally over time — including humans, domesticated and wild mammals. According to our estimates, in the 1850s, the combined biomass of wild mammals was ≈200 Mt (million tonnes), roughly equal to that of humanity and its domesticated mammals at that time. Since then, human and domesticated mammal populations have grown rapidly, reaching their current combined biomass of ≈1100 Mt. During the same period, the total biomass of wild mammals decreased by more than 2-fold. We estimate that, despite a moderate increase in the recent decades, the global biomass of wild marine mammals has declined by ≈70% since the 1850s. This provides a broader perspective to observed species extinctions, with ≈2% of marine mammal species recorded as extinct during the same period. While historical wild mammal biomass estimates rely on limited data and have various uncertainties, they provide a complementary perspective to species extinctions and other metrics in tracking the status of wildlife. This work additionally provides a quantitative view on the rapid human-induced shift in the composition of mammalian biomass over the past two centuries...

Free Open Access Nature Article at:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63888-z

The infographic at the top says all that needs really be said.

[tazcat]

1. How depressing

[jfz9580m]

2. It's obscene-one species crassly treating a whole

Planet as solely a backdrop for humsn activity and prioritizing our most frivolous demands over even minimally decent treatment of the planet or its non-human animals:
https://phys.org/news/2025-10-humanity-wildlife-recedes-extent-human.html

I was grossed out by this 5 years ago:
https://fisherp.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/s41586-020-3010-5.pdf

Global human-made mass exceeds all living
biomass

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-3010-5
Published online: 9 December 2020

Humanity has become a dominant force in shaping the face of Earth1–9. An emerging
question is how the overall material output of human activities compares to the
overall natural biomass. Here we quantify the human-made mass, referred to as
‘anthropogenic mass’, and compare it to the overall living biomass on Earth, which
currently equals approximately 1.1 teratonnes10,11. We find that Earth is exactly at the
crossover point; in the year 2020 (± 6), the anthropogenic mass, which has recently
doubled roughly every 20 years, will surpass all global living biomass. On average,
for each person on the globe, anthropogenic mass equal to more than his or her
bodyweight is produced every week. This quantification of the human enterprise
gives a mass-based quantitative and symbolic characterization of the human-induced
epoch of the Anthropocene.

[SorellaLaBefana]

3. Thank you for the links you posted

I (blush) was unaware of the actual extent of human and domestic animal mass compared with the rest of the species until coming across the OP study. I simply had the vague idea that it was a lot. I'm glad that others are not so oblivious.

However, it is, to True Adherents of the various Abrahamic Religions, that this is simply the fulfillment of God’s Plan:

Genesis.1 [26-31]
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Of course, as we know from the Revealed Word, a mere 10 generations (Genesis.5) after The Creation and when a guy named Noah was just five hundred years old, God decided he had made a mistake ...

To many of us who sit in darkness, it almost seems as though—perhaps—He got it wrong second time around as well. Certainly does seem to have made an error in giving humans neither sufficient foresight to prevent destruction of the biosphere nor Planet-B for a backup.

[Crunchy Frog]

4. We're choking out the planet. I can't believe that there are people who are worried that population growth is slowing.

[SorellaLaBefana]

5. Our economic system is based upon ever expanding demand for goods and services-most easily acheived by population growth

If we continue this course, Rev. Malthus will, in spite of now over two centuries of denial, eventually be proven correct: That population will grow until reaching limits of sustainability since improvements to general living conditions have historically simply encouraged more population growth.

If one is unfamiliar with his work, this wiki article is as good a place to start as any for discussion of his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population and of its evolution through his last contribution in 1826.

We chose to not add to population growth. Most of our siblings made another choice.

[jfz9580m]

6. Fortunately there is growing resistance

To that bullshit at least on the left. It used to depress me that so many even on the left perpetuate that noxious and delusional narrative:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/there-are-many-threats-to-humanity.-a-low-birth-rate-isnt-one-of-them

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/01/progressive-pronatalism-is-an-oxymoron-how-arguments-buying-into-the-low-fertility-panic-fail-women/

Nandita Bajaj of Population Balance, Christopher Ketcham, Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs etc are people on the left who are embracing animal rights and the environment and in very sane and universal ways.

A lot of damage was done by a very vocal type (e.g. Betsy Hartmann, George Monbiot) who attacked anyone making the obvious point that permanent growth on a finite planet is insane as “ecofascist” (a term I loathe).

Cornucopian economists attacked sane stuff like the Limits to Growth and this totally bogus astroturf type made it out to be racist or sexist to point the obvious out (ironically make things overall more racist and sexist..growing population numbers hits the worse off people most, making it such a noxious lie that addressing population explosion is inherently coercive. That’s one of the worst lies of the past and no one who perpetuated it should have any credibility going forward).

Platitudes and social media posts ignore the the reality of how resource strain actually works except for bullshit jobs or shit jobs rapaciously mining the planet to the maximum.
It’s like the right wing argument that child labor is actually a type of economic growth.
Population explosion leads to the worst type of job growth and strains the planet and societies to breaking point.

Besides if food has scaled with the green revolution it is obvious that education and healthcare haven’t and can’t. Humans are a complex species and require resources beyond food.

Rising extremism I would be willing to wager is correlated with population explosion and the societal stress that accompanies it.

People fighting over the same strained resource pool are essentially almost directed by industrialists (via social media) and cynical politicians to get into polarized conflicts.