3-Minute Insect Essential #24 from the INSECT NEWS NETWORK

CITIZEN SCIENCE and the Bee-A-Thon w/ Patch Adams – INN #24. To hear the full show, visit www.insectnewsnetwork.com and type in the number 24 - that's pound 24 in the search bar.

Here's a question I get asked by a lot of people especially curious kids:

Q: How many ants are on the planet?

A: According to the worlds leading myrmecologist the venerable Prof EO Wilson of Harvard University, a conservative estimate is 1 x 10 to the 14 zeroes. That's a about 10 quadrillion ants.

To put a conjectural context onto that unfathomable number - it has been estimated that 40,000 ants have the computing capacity of one person. that means the total ants in the world have the brain power of 250 billion people.

Yikes.