28th October 2025 – (Hong Kong) A comprehensive international study has determined that aggregate human movement now surpasses the combined mobility of all wild land mammals, birds and insects by a factor of forty. The investigation, detailed in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, documents a four thousand per cent increase in human movement since the Industrial Revolution approximately 170 years ago.
Concurrently, the research indicates a sixty per cent reduction in marine animal mobility over the same period. Scientists have highlighted this global decline in animal movement as a concerning indicator of environmental pressure, noting that travel is fundamental to survival for species seeking nourishment, evading predators, and connecting ecosystems.
To facilitate this comparison, researchers developed a novel metric integrating total species biomass with annual travel distance. Their analysis revealed that human locomotion on foot alone exceeds the total movement of all wild land mammals, birds, and arthropods by sixfold.
The primary contributors to modern human mobility were identified as motor vehicles and motorcycles, followed by air transport, walking, and cycling. The study notes the average individual now covers thirty kilometres daily. In a striking comparison, researchers observed that the energy consumption of a single airline equates to the total annual energy expenditure of all wild birds in flight.
A complementary study published in Nature Communications documented parallel trends in biological mass. Since 1850, the combined weight of wild land and marine mammals has decreased by approximately seventy per cent, declining from 200 million tonnes to just 60 million tonnes.
This dramatic wildlife reduction contrasts sharply with human and livestock expansion. During the same timeframe, human biomass increased by seven hundred per cent, while the mass of farm animals grew by four hundred per cent. The collective weight of humans and their livestock now totals approximately 1.1 billion tonnes.
The research team from the Weizmann Institute of Science emphasised these findings demonstrate the extensive nature of human dominance over global ecosystems. They noted the particular devastation of marine mammals, whose biomass has collapsed to just thirty per cent of pre-industrial levels due largely to commercial hunting operations.