50 billion birds live on Earth, new study finds
According to the estimation, there are at least six times more birds on the planet than people. The most common species are house sparrows and European starlings.
Around 50 billion birds live on Earth, meaning that there are around six times as many birds as humans on the planet, according to a study by Australian scientists.
The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences, worked with data on 9,700 known bird species from around the world, which they said represented 92% of all extant species.
"Quantifying abundance, however, is difficult and time consuming," the study said. The researchers combined scientific surveys of individual species across specific distribution areas, with almost a billion entries posted in the online ornithological database eBird.
"We conclude that there are many rare species, highlighting the need to continue to refine global population estimates for all taxa and the role that global citizen science data can play in this effort," the team, led by William Cornwell from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said.
