Humans only make up 0.01% of life on Earth. What about the rest?

The world’s plant mass is huge. At over 420 billion tons of carbon (biomass is estimated as the weight of carbon in each major taxonomic group), plant life accounts for 82.4% of Earth's total biomass. In comparison, all the animals on Earth create just 0.47% of the total biomass.

Individual bacterium are tiny, but by banding together they weigh a massive 70 billion tons of carbon — about 13% of Earth's total biomass. Much of this is concentrated in the world's oceans — bacteria rule the marine environment, accounting for 70% of the total marine biomass.

Anthropods make up the biggest share of the two billion tons of carbon that comprise the world's animal biomass. The invertebrate animals — like insects, arachnids and crustaceans — make up around 42% of the total.

Fish are number two in the animal kingdom, accounting for 29% of the world's animal biomass. But overfishing, rising sea temperatures and shipping are deteriorating global fish stocks.

At 0.1 billion tons of carbon, humans comprise 0.01% of the world's total biomass and 2.5% of animal biomass.

While human biomass is tiny, our effect on the planet is huge. For example: humans have significantly shifted the biomass of animal species. Livestock animals like pigs and sheep used for food and agriculture account for 4% of animal biomass, ten times more than the biomass of both wild mammals and birds combined.

Estimates suggest the weight of human-created mass reached the total weight of all the biomass on Earth in 2020. Of all the stuff we produce, cities and infrastructure account for most of this weight — concrete makes up more than half the mass produced by humans.