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Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

To me, it is insects. And maybe their close relatives in the oceans and lakes.

I did a nature guiding course a long time ago, and according to that the biomass of termites in the Kruger National Park exceeds the elephant population there.

They're talking about total mass. So I think insects and whatever is in the ocean would probably be in very last place. According to them, it's white-tailed deer.

> The heavyweight champion is that furtive denizen of parks, meadows, and forests throughout the Americas, the white-tailed deer. It accounts for almost 10% of the total biomass of wild land mammals.

Insects outweigh us 17 to 1.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/al...

Truth of it’s the opposite. Even now general estimates put insect and fish biomass at significantly eclipsing mammal biomass. Insects might be small, but there are so many of them that it doesn’t matter.

Indeed. Insects, then fish, then everything else, per https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-make-110000...

> Insects, then fish, then everything else,

That is not how I read your source. It seems to be plants, then bacteria, then everything else.

There's a species of small fish in the deep ocean that may have as many as a quadrillion individuals.

The ocean has a far greater area than the land, and life there has been around much longer. Why would you think it would be in last place?

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