Millions of Ants per Person

A global ant census cannot count every individual, but a 2022 study combined data from thousands of field samples and estimated roughly 20 quadrillion ground-dwelling and tree-dwelling ants. Dividing that estimate by the world’s human population gives roughly 2–3 million ants per person. This is a statistical comparison, not a literal distribution: ants are unevenly concentrated, and the estimate has substantial uncertainty. The illustration is AI-generated and does not depict an exact count.