The same holds true for birds. Unfortunately, obtaining an accurate number is constrained by the fact that most species remain to be described and because indirect attempts to answer this question have been highly controversial. But don't get too comfortable. The worst was the third extinction, which took place around 250 million years ago and wiped out 96 percent of life on Earth… For bats alone, it … (Lists only exist for some orders; e.g. The meek shall inherit the earth, or at least Australia which is a reasonable portion of it. There are over 5000 species of mammals in the world. Scientists have described well over over 1.7 million of the world's species of animals, plants, insects and algae. What is happening to our species and their habitat? More recently, in May 2016, scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described. The total amount of DNA base pairs on Earth, as a possible approximation of global biodiversity, is estimated at 5.0 … Humans make up just 0.01% of life: but we’ve had much larger impacts on shaping the animal kingdom. How is life on Earth distributed across the taxonomic kingdoms? Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent … The sum of the biomass across all taxa on Earth is ≈550 Gt C, of which ≈80% (≈450 Gt C; SI Appendix, Table S2) are plants, dominated by land plants (embryophytes). But there's a different kind of mammal, which – by uniquely serving human needs – has also come to dominate the rest of the animal kingdom: livestock. However, the percentage of wild mammals was far and few between; 60 percent of the mammals on Earth are livestock (predominantly cattle and pigs), 36 percent are humans, and just four percent of the living mammals on the planet are wild animals. If you were to list out every species that has ever existed on Earth—from the tiniest mold spore to the largest mammal—biologists estimate that somewhere around 99 percent of those species would currently be extinct. The picture is even more stark for mammals – 60% of all mammals on Earth are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals. — Two species of vertebrate, animals with a backbone, have gone extinct every year, on average, for the past century. Even after centuries of effort, some 86 percent of Earth's species have yet to be fully described, according to new study that predicts our planet is home to 8.7 million species. Nearly a quarter of all mammals can fly. Mammals in general made up only a small portion of the planet when compared to plants, which accounted for over 80 percent of Earth’s biomass. Livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, makes up about 60 percent of all mammals on Earth (at 0.1 Gt C). Of all the mammals living on Earth, humans and their livestock represent 96 percent (36 percent and 60 percent, respectively), meaning that just 4 percent of the planet’s mammals are wild animals, shows an infographic published by The Guardian. Over seven million species of plants and animals live on planet earth, according to the best estimates made by biologists. The second major biomass component is bacteria (≈70 Gt C; SI Appendix, Tables S3–S7 ), constituting ≈15% of the global biomass. August 24, 2011 Eight million, seven hundred thousand species!