Sometimes the number of birds in central squares can be alarming! Pigeons and sparrows, unafraid of people, gather in large groups, obstructing passage and traffic. But this is not only observed in your city. Imagine the vast diversity of birds that inhabit the Earth!
Australian researchers conducted a large-scale study dedicated to counting birds and were shocked by the results! The official number of birds living on our planet is approximately 50 billion, which is more than six times the number of people on Earth! However, the authors of the study emphasize that there are actually many more birds, as their work accounted for only 9,700 species, which is 92% of all currently existing species.
“Humans have put a lot of effort into counting their own species – a total of 7.8 billion people,” notes ecologist Will Cornwell from the University of New South Wales in Australia. “This is the first comprehensive attempt to count another species.”
Some bird species are on the brink of extinction. For example, there are only about 100 black-breasted three-toed birds left. At the same time, there are millions of rainbow lorikeets! In the “billion club,” there are only four species: the house sparrow, the common starling, the Delaware gull, and the barn swallow. About 12% of the studied species have a global population of fewer than 5,000 individuals.
The authors of the study note that it is quite interesting that only a few species dominate the entire planet. Perhaps in the future, scientists will be able to determine the reasons why these birds have become so widespread.
