2023-09-13 · 100% of mammal biomass
Wild mammals are a rounding error
Weigh every mammal on Earth. Livestock take most of the mass. Humans take most of the rest. Everything that still lives wild — whales, deer, rats, bats — shares the last sliver.
Biomass grids are about weight on Earth, not headcount — a whale and a mouse can share a color family but not a cell count story. This grid divides mammal biomass (2023 snapshot) into colored bands — Livestock, Humans, and Wild mammals — using equal squares so you compare shares, not country size on a map.
1 cell = 1.1 million tonnes of wet mammal biomass (0.1% of mammal biomass) · 1,000 cells
Context
The 2023 figures from Greenspoon et al., The global biomass of wild mammals, PNAS 2023 put Livestock at 59% of mammal biomass and Humans at 36% — about $1 billion tonnes of wet mammal biomass in this edition's rounding.
Greenspoon et al.
2023 (PNAS): livestock ≈630 million tonnes, humans ≈390 million tonnes, wild mammals ≈60 million tonnes (about 20 land + 40 marine).
Greenspoon et al. 2023 (PNAS): livestock ≈630 million tonnes, humans ≈390 million tonnes, wild mammals ≈60 million tonnes (about 20 land + 40 marine). Shares rounded onto 1,000 equal cells. This grid is mass, not headcount — one blue square is the same tonnes as one orange square.
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Credit this grid as Inagrid — https://inagrid.com/e/2023-09-13-wild-mammals
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