In early 2020, ornithologist Noah Strycker found himself walking amongst several thousand chinstrap penguins on Elephant Island. The penguin colony on the island hadn't been properly surveyed in over forty years. Strycker is a graduate student at a New York university and a professional bird watcher.
chinstrap penguin numbers are in decline, according to the survey that he and his colleagues produced. One of the biggest colonies of penguins on Earth is formed by this species, which gathers in millions in some locations. Strycker has developed something of a hobby for this task and he doesn't mind being counted.
He began to wonder how many starlings were contained in the magical murmurations that these birds form, and which swell and undulate across the night sky in many parts of the world. They are pretty. Strycker said it almost looked like smoke. It makes you wonder how many of them are there. He found out that there are roughly 1 million in the average murmuration. Strycker wanted to know what the largest group of animals ever recorded on Earth were.
What species drove to extinction?
Back into the past, up into the sky, down into the ocean, and across the desert plains are some of the places we can go if we answer this question correctly. The proof of the abundance of animal life on Earth is magnificent, but it also points to humanity's role in decreasing and increasing it.
Strycker shared his discoveries in his book " The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They reveal About Being Human". Birds are a good contender for the title of most numerous group. Chinstrap penguins can reach 2 million on the South Sandwich Islands, but starling numbers are jaw-droppingly high at 1 million per flock.
The red-billed penguins are so large that they seem to roar as they pass overhead, but those charismatic penguins are much smaller. They are considered to be the most abundant bird in the world. Strycker said that they make a lot of large flocks. The success of these birds may be helped by the spread of agriculture. They're hated by farmers who lose a lot of harvests to these birds.
It can take five hours for a flock to pass overhead because of the number of quoilea. The passenger pigeon is an even more populous bird that used to be plentiful across American skies. People stand there and watch a single flock of passenger pigeons fly over them for hours or days at a time, which is crazy. Strycker spoke. The gathering was 300 miles long and 1 mile wide, and was estimated to hold 3.5 billion birds, based on the number of pigeons per square mile. This species was wiped out by hunting.
The pigeon of yore is the most populous creature on Earth. There are quite a few other possibilities still.
There are a lot of pigeons.
The passenger pigeon's closest competitor for the title so far is the Atlantic herring, which is found in schools that exceed 4 billion. They're still so impressive to behold that they deserve a mention, even though other species don't come close. In the past, large herds of wildebeest have gathered in southern Africa to march across the savanna for weeks. In Texas, there's a single cave that's home to more than 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats, whose closely packed bodies transform the cave's interior into a rippling mass.
There's one animal that leaves a trail of dust when it gathers large. A trail of destruction and destruction.
In East Africa earlier this year, a veil of insects swept across the sky, forming a mass of spiky legs and fluttering wings. It was like a black blanket in the sky. Emily Kimathi said it was hard to see the clouds.
The swarm was composed of desert Locusts, a species that can be found in large numbers in parts of the Middle East and South Asia. There have been swarms in the Horn of Africa in the past. According to Kimathi, a swarm of 200 billion locusts would have been contained by the single 2020 throng. The species can increase its population in a few months.
Kimathi is concerned about the size of these swarms. The eggs to hatch from the desert sands need heat and moist to grow. Climate change is increasing these conditions for the Locusts. "These areas are getting more arid, and when they do get the rain, it's very heavy," Kimathi said. The conditions are getting more frequent. The areas are becoming more favorable for the breeding of Locusts.
There is a question about what makes insects swarm.
In this case, the gathering of animals isn't just a spectacle to behold; a swarm of animals can decimate crops in a matter of hours.
Kimathi is trying to find a solution to this huge challenge. In a recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports, she used meteorological data and information on the breeding patterns of desert Locusts to develop models that identify precise geographical locations across the region where species are most likely to breed in the future She's hoping her findings will inform early-warning systems that countries can use to predict where Locusts will breed so they can be stopped before they hatch.
It's two-hundred billion. The perfect conditions can lead to more swarms. Albert Child, an amateur weatherman, was bewitched by a swarm of gnats that flew across the sky in the late 19th century. Child estimated the swarm covered an area of over 200,000 square miles.
According to Child's estimates, Albert's Swarm contained trillions of insects. It's three and a half trillion. That is believed to be the largest group of animals ever recorded by a human. The historic flight of the Rocky Mountain Locusts offers a cautionary look at the other swarms that are gathering today.
It's hard to imagine what several trillion Locusts look like. If we go with a slightly more liberal definition of what a group means, there's one final contender on our list. Under the Earth's surface, we find creatures that gather in colonies so large, it's almost impossible that they form a unit.
The Argentine ant was accidentally introduced to Europe around 100 years ago. The world's largest colony is 3,700 miles underground across Europe. It's likely that the whole system contains trillions because the stretch is made up of several hundred nests. The task of estimating these insects may be too difficult.
The question of what animal forms the biggest group is a difficult one to answer. It seems like a quantifiable question and the harder it is to define what a group is. It is hard to estimate large concentrations. He said that the more you dive into it, the more you can't answer the question without talking about yourself. We can't separate the boom and bust of animal populations.
Considering the abundance of life on Earth will help us do a better job of protecting it.
The piece was updated to say that chinstrap penguins are not the largest penguin colony on Earth.
The original article was published on Live Science in December of 2020.
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