How Many Bugs Are in the World?

There are about 7.7 billion humans living on the earth. What if I told you, the total number humans doesn’t even make up a fraction of the total number of bugs on the planet? There is an estimated 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) bugs on earth. That’s one with 19 zeros after it! Can you imagine that many bugs?

We don’t know exactly how many bugs there are in the world. A lot of insect species have not even been discovered yet and scientists discover thousands of new insect species each year. There are currently around 925,000 identified insect species, but there is no definite answer to just how many species have yet to be identified. There are approximately 35,000 different species of spiders and 12,000 species of ants across the world. Invertebrates (species that do not have a backbone, like insects) outnumber vertebrate species, which include birds, mammals, fish, amphibians, and reptiles, 15 to 1. They also out number plant species 3 to 1.

It is hard to believe that there are so many bugs out there, but many are so small we do not even notice them. Ants, for example, can live in colonies of thousands and we don’t see the majority of them as only female worker ants leave their nests to find food and supplies. This makes it tough to determine how many ants are in the world. Both big and small there are a lot of insects!