The New Megafauna: Human Mobility Alone Likely Exceeds the Combined Biomass Movement of All Terrestrial Wildlife.

A recent study by Rosenberg, Y., Wiedenhofer, D., Virág, D. et al. provides the first holistic, quantitative assessment of global mobility by comparing the mass movement of humans and all wild animal life, introducing the metric of Biomass Movement (Biomass×Distance per Year). The findings offer a sharp perspective on the extent of human activity in the Anthropocene.

🌍 Impact and Ecological Consequences

The findings offer a concrete way to assess the current state of the biosphere. Here are the two main ecological consequences in a nutshell:

• Ecological Service Loss: Large animals, which dominate natural biomass movement, are essential for transporting nutrients, energy, and organisms, and for physical ecosystem engineering (e.g., compacting soils, mixing waters). Their decline directly translates to a diminished capacity for these vital ecological processes.

  
  

• Nutrient Cycling Disruption: The substantial decline in the movement of large animals on land and in the oceans over the past two centuries disrupts large-scale nutrient transport.

Illustration 1: Unprecedented scale of human mobility and the resulting historical and ecological reversal in global movement patterns.

💡 The Immense Scale of Human Mobility

The research provides a sobering, quantitative view of the world's mobility, dominated by human activity and marked by ecological decline. Biomass movement is defined as an organism's total biomass multiplied by the distance it actively travels per year, offering a comparable metric to assess global mobility (Biomass×Distance per Year).

Land Dominance and Energetic Cost

Human mobility is now a defining planetary force, driven largely by population growth and motorized transportation:

• Human vs. Wild Animals: The total biomass movement of all wild land animals (mammals, birds, and arthropods combined) is about 40 times smaller than the total biomass movement of humans.

• Walking Eclipses Wildlife: The movement generated by human walking and cycling alone (∼600 Gt⋅km⋅yr−1) likely exceeds the total biomass movement of all terrestrial wildlife combined (∼100 Gt⋅km⋅yr−1).

• Energetic Disparity: This motorized action leads to an enormous energetic disparity: the energy used for human transportation (∼30,000 TWh⋅yr−1) surpasses that of wild land vertebrates by an order of 300-fold. The power used by all wild land mammals combined is similar to that of a single large power station.

• Non-Living Mass: The movement of non-living mass is also staggering: passenger vehicles alone (∼40,000 Gt⋅km⋅yr−1) are comparable to the biomass movement of all life on Earth.

🌊 Historical Reversal and Marine Collapse

The study places current movement in a historical context, emphasizing a profound reversal of ecological dynamics:

• Megafauna Loss: Before late Pleistocene extinctions, wild mammals (mostly megafauna) had sufficient biomass movement to be estimated on par with current human walking and cycling, a scale that has now been functionally lost from the natural world.

• Eclipsed Migrations: Today, even iconic mass animal migrations, such as the Serengeti migration, are eclipsed by everyday human commutes; their scale is comparable only to large, temporary human gatherings like the FIFA World Cup.

• Marine Collapse: The world's largest natural movement source, the ocean, has suffered a severe decline. The biomass movement of marine animals has been halved (lost ∼60%) since 1850 due primarily to commercial fishing and whaling, while human biomass movement increased approximately 40-fold during the same period.

• The Biggest Mover: The only single natural movement stable and large enough to rival human walking and cycling is the daily diel vertical migration of zooplankton and mesopelagic fish, estimated at over 1,000 Gt⋅km⋅yr−1, which is the largest animal movement on Earth.

Illustration 2: Biomass movement then vs now

✅ Policy and Research Directions

The systematic quantification of biomass movement provides a positive, focused agenda for sustainability efforts and future research.

• Prioritize Sustainable Human Transport: The massive contribution of motorized vehicles to human biomass movement highlights the need for policies accelerating the shift toward electrified, shared, and non-motorized transportation (walking and cycling) to drastically reduce energy use and the environmental footprint.

  
  

• Focus Research on Dominant, Unknown Groups: The high uncertainty in the estimated global biomass movement of insects (land arthropods) and the limited data on non-migratory animals (which constitute most natural movement) identify key knowledge gaps that future research should aim to close.

  
  

• Monitor and Restore Natural Mobility: Quantifying biomass movement allows for the monitoring of trends and the prediction of ecological outcomes (like nutrient cycling). Policies aimed at restoring populations of large marine animals (e.g., through protected areas and reduced fishing/whaling) are directly supported as a mechanism for rebuilding crucial ecological functions.

The study by Rosenberg, Y., Wiedenhofer, D., Virág, D. et al. improves our perception of the relationships between humanity and other species and opens up new research avenues regarding trade-offs and potential pathways towards environmental sustainability.

Resource: Rosenberg, Y., Wiedenhofer, D., Virág, D. et al. Human biomass movement exceeds the biomass movement of all land animals combined. Nat Ecol Evol  (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02863-9