I was having a bit of a talk with my friends and an odd question came up
disregarding complex machinery; Who could move more dirt in an hour. All the humans in the world working together or all the ants in the world working together
So what do you think? and why?
If you compare the biomass table on wikipedia, it’s an even brake between ants and humans in terms of dry biomass and a big win for ants in terms of wet biomass(estimated 3-30 times greater for ants). Which means that if you split ants into groups that are each roughly the weight of a human being, there’d be 3-30 times more of those groups of ants than humans on the planet. That’s a lot of ants. Now, remember that ants can carry many times their weight and work for more hours and less pay than humans.
The only advantage that humans have is that they can cover distance faster. So, unless your task requires the dirt to be moved some distance that ants can’t cover in one hour, it’s a definite win for the ants.
Edit: one more thing, there are a lot of sick, old, disabled, lazy, fat humans who won’t move dirt. If an ant gets sick, old, disabled, lazy or fat he dies quickly, so there aren’t many of those among ants.