Human biomass movement exceeds the biomass movement of all land animals combined

The code and data supporting the results reported in the Nature Ecology & Evolution 2025 manuscript 'Human biomass movement exceeds the biomass movement of all land animals combined' by Rosenberg et al. are provided here.

Abstract:

Earth is teeming with life on the move, shaping ecosystems and human civilizations alike. However, the magnitude of movement by humans and other animals has yet to be assessed holistically. Here, we introduce a biomass movement metric, estimate it across the biosphere and in comparison to humans. We show that the combined biomass movement of all wild birds, land arthropods, and wild running mammals is about one-sixth that of walking humans, and 40 times smaller than the total biomass movement of humans. The biomass movement of marine animals, which we find to be the living world’s largest, has been halved since 1850 due to industrial fishing and whaling, while human biomass movement has increased 40-fold. This study gives a quantitative perspective on global mobility in the Anthropocene and sharpens our perception regarding the extent of human versus animal activity.