There are about 20000 trillion ants on Earth, new study estimates

Researchers say figure is a ‘conservative estimate’

There are about 20 quadrillion ants living on Earth – “a 20 with 15 zeros” — showed findings from a new study.

This figure corresponds to about a fifth of all the mass of every human on Earth, said the research, published in the journal PNAS on Monday.

The study reviewed a range of existing studies on ants, narrowed the research down to about 500 suitable papers and combined their data to arrive at this figure, which is “2-20 times higher than previous estimates”.