ANSWERS: 2
  • The ants. By a lot. According to an estimate by E.O. Wilson (one of the world's most famous entomologists), ants comprise roughly half the insect biomass in the world and are roughly equal in weight to the weight of all the humans in the world. (If you want to find out more about ants, you can start with Wilson's and Holldobler's book, "Journey to the Ants", http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674485262/102-1989013-6002542?v=glance&n=283155). In contrast, there are roughly 600,000 African elephants and 40,000-50,000 Asian elephants in the world. If one overestimates their weights to all be equal to the weight of a full-grown male African elephant, the largest of the surviving elephant types, then that comes to 650,000 elephants x 16,000lbs. each = 10,400,000,000 lbs. Assuming that an "average" adult man weighs around 155 lbs., the combined elephant weight comes out roughly equal to 67,096,774 full-grown men. Since one can easily see that this is nowhere close to the world's combined human weight, and by estimate to the world's combined ant weight, you can see how far ahead the ants are.
  • A related topic: A study of Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (in New Hampshire, USA) showed that the tiny Red-Backed Salamanders were, by weight, the most abundant vertebrate, outweighing White-Tailed Deer, Moose, and Black Bears.

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