How much birds are there in the world

Animals News. How many birds are there in the world? A rooftop flock of pigeons flying over Bushwick, Brooklyn. But how many pigeons are there? For that matter, how many birds are there? A new study attempts to answer. Share Tweet Email. Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants. This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city. Animals Wild Cities This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city Caracals have learned to hunt around the urban edges of Cape Town, though the predator faces many threats, such as getting hit by cars.

India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big. Environment Planet Possible India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big Grassroots efforts are bringing solar panels to rural villages without electricity, while massive solar arrays are being built across the country.

Go Further. Animals Wild Cities This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city. Animals This frog mysteriously re-evolved a full set of teeth. Animals Wild Cities Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London. Animals Wild Cities Morocco has 3 million stray dogs. Meet the people trying to help. Animals Whales eat three times more than previously thought. Environment Planet Possible India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big.

But it is much more difficult to count the same kinds of birds in dense forest, or to count birds who nest in huge colonies with hundreds of thousands of birds.

Even getting an accurate count of a large flock of birds flying overhead, like blackbirds or shorebirds, can prove difficult. Each year, he set up mist nets which are very fine nets designed to catch small birds without harming them in the same sites along jungle trails. Then a colleague suggested he set up a rope system to raise the long mist nets off the ground and up into the forest canopy.

This was, after all, a jungle with several, dense canopy layers. He undertook the suggestion to prove that he really did have a good handle on the birds of the forest. What he found within 30 minutes of raising the net was that there was an entire community of bird species he did not know were present, despite the fact he had worked in the forest for almost two decades. Because of the difficulties not only with counting the birds we know about but even finding all the birds in a given area, scientists believe it is impossible to know with any real degree of accuracy just how many birds there are on Earth.

However, that certainly does not stop many scientists and bird biologists from trying to come up with reasonable estimates of the global bird population.

The researchers would like to invite any birdwatching enthusiast to contribute to eBird. As more data becomes available, the researchers plan to perform more robust analyses that may paint a more accurate picture of the state of bird ecosystems across the globe.

The findings appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Tibi is a science journalist and co-founder of ZME Science. He writes mainly about emerging tech, physics, climate, and space. In his spare time, Tibi likes to make weird music on his computer and groom felines. Home Environment Animals. How many birds are there in the world? AI estimates around 50 billion There are about six times more birds than humans on planet Earth.