How many mammal species

Inspire a lifelong connection with wildlife and wild places through our children's publications, products, and activities. In 4 seconds , you will be redirected to nwfactionfund. The National Wildlife Federation. Moles and Armadillos. Cetaceans and Sirenians. Donate Today. Sign a Petition. Donate Monthly. Nearby Events. Historical Series 18 : 25 — Hinchliff , C. Synthesis of phylogeny and taxonomy into a comprehensive tree of life.

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Feagin V. Sorex rohweri sp. Mammalia, Soricidae from northwestern North America. Reeder , D. Global trends and biases in new mammal species discoveries. They killed them for their meat. And the post-agriculture phase where the biggest impact was indirect : habitat loss through the expansion of farmland.

Our past relationship with wild animals has been a zero-sum game: in one way or another, human success has come at the cost of wild animals. Some people suggest a return to wild hunting as an alternative to modern, intensive farming. A return to our primal roots. This might be sustainable for a few local communities. But we only need to do a simple calculation to see how unfeasible this is at any larger scale. We cannot go back to this hunter-gatherer way of living.

Even a tiny number of people living this lifestyle had a massive negative impact on wildlife. But the alternative of continued growth in livestock consumption is also not sustainable. In the short term, it is saving some wild mammals from hunting. But its environmental costs are high: the expansion of agricultural land is the leading driver of deforestation, it emits large amounts of greenhouse gases, and needs lots of resource inputs.

Thankfully we have options to build a better future. If we can reduce agricultural land — and primarily land use for livestock — we can free up land for wild mammals to return. There are already positive signs that this is possible. In the chart we see the change in per capita agricultural land use from 5, years ago to today. The most dramatic decline has happened in the last 50 years: the amount of agricultural land per person has more than halved since This was the result of increased crop yields and livestock productivity.

Of course, the world population also increased over that time, meaning total agricultural land use continued to grow. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reports a decline in global agricultural land since falling from 4. A very small decline, but signs that we could be at a turning point. But looking to the future, a decline in agricultural land alongside a rise in wild mammals is possible.

How can we achieve this? Some people are in favor of a switch to traditional plant-based diets: cereals, legumes, fruits, and vegetables. Because the land use of plant-based diets is smaller than meat-based diets this is definitely a sustainable option; those who adopt such diets have a low environmental footprint. We can have our cake and eat it; or rather, we can have our meat and keep our animals too. Food production is entering a new phase where we can move meat production from the farm to the lab.

The prospects for cultured meat are growing. In , Singapore was the first country to bring lab-grown chicken to the market. A range of alternative products using other technologies such as fermentation or plant-based substitutes are moving forward: Beyond Meat , Quorn and Impossible Foods are a few examples. The biggest barriers — as with all technologies in their infancy — is going to be scale and affordability. If these products are to make a difference at a global scale we need to be able to produce them in large volumes and at low cost.

They have to be cheaper than meat. For the first time in human history we could decouple human progress from ecological degradation. The game between humans and wild animals no longer needs to be zero-sum. We can reduce poaching and restore old habitats to allow wild mammals to flourish.

Doing so does not have to come at the cost of human wellbeing. We can thrive alongside, rather than compete with, the other mammals that we share this planet with. Some think this new epoch should start at the Industrial Revolution, some at the advent of agriculture 10, to 15, years ago. This feeds into the popular notion that environmental destruction is a recent phenomenon. The lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors are instead romanticized. Many think they lived in balance with nature, unlike modern society where we fight against it.

The extent of these extinctions across continents is shown in the chart. There is strong evidence to suggest that these were primarily driven by humans — we look at this in more detail later. Humans evolved in Africa, and hominins had already been interacting with mammals for a long time. But Australia, North America and South America were particularly hard-hit; very soon after humans arrived, most large mammals were gone.

Far from being in balance with ecosystems, very small populations of hunter-gatherers changed them forever. A few million killed off hundreds of species that we will never get back. The driver of the QME has been debated for centuries. Debate has been centered around how much was caused by humans and how much by changes in climate. Today the consensus is that most of these extinctions were caused by humans. Extinction timings closely match the timing of human arrival.

The timing of megafauna extinctions were not consistent across the world; instead, the timing of their demise coincided closely with the arrival of humans on each continent. The timing of human arrivals and extinction events is shown on the map.

Humans reached Australia somewhere between 65 to 44, years ago. It was tens of thousands of years before the extinctions in North and South America occurred. And several more before these occurred in Madagascar and the Caribbean islands. Elephant birds in Madagascar were still present eight millennia after the mammoth and mastodon were killed off in America.

Significant climatic changes tend to be felt globally. If these extinction were solely due to climate we would expect them to occur at a similar time across the continents. QME selectively impacted large mammals.

There have been five big mass extinction events, and a number of smaller ones. Large ecological changes tend to impact everything from large to small mammals, reptiles, birds, and fish. The QME was different and unique in the fossil record: it selectively killed off large mammals.

This suggests a strong influence from humans since we selectively hunt larger ones. There are several reasons why large mammals in particular have been at greater risk since the arrival of humans.

Islands were more heavily impacted than Africa. As we saw previously, Africa was less-heavily impacted than other continents during this period. We would expect this since hominids had been interacting with mammals for a long time before this. These interactions between species would have impacted mammal populations more gradually and to a lesser extent. They may have already reached some form of equilibrium. When humans arrived on other continents — such as Australia or the Americas — these interactions were new and represented a step-change in the dynamics of the ecosystem.

Humans were an efficient new predator. There has now been many studies focused on the question of whether humans were the key driver of the QME. The consensus is yes. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were key to the demise of these megafauna. Human impact on ecosystems therefore date back tens of thousands of years, despite the Anthropocene paradigm that is this a recent phenomenon. In a related article we look at the long history of the relationship between human populations and wild mammals.

This was first driven by hunting: a global population of less than 5 million early humans hunted more than of largest mammals to extinction. Since the agricultural revolution, the decline in wild mammals has been driven through a mix of hunting but also habitat loss from the expansion of agricultural land.

These estimates come from three key sources: long historical figures come from the work of Anthony Barnosky ; figures for the year figures from Vaclav Smil ; and figures from Yinon Bar-On, Rob Phillips and Ron Milo In the chart we see the distribution of global mammal biomass in , split between humans, livestock and wild animals.

The dominance of humans is clear. Human biomass alone is almost ten times greater than wild mammals. The same applies to the cows we raise: cattle weigh almost ten times as much as all wild mammals combined. Here we focus on mammal populations, so neither wild birds or poultry are included.

But for birds the story is similar : our poultry biomass is more than twice that of wild birds. Humans make up only 0. Some countries have none or very few unique species, whilst others are well-known as biodiversity hotspots. An important metric for biodiversity and conservation is not only the number of mammal species a country has, but more specifically, how many endemic species it has. Endemic species are those which occur naturally in only one country.

In other words, species that are unique to a given location. Species which exist everywhere are less likely to go extinct; severe threats to that species would have to exist in every country in the world. If a species exists in only one country, it might require only localized threats to kill it off. In the map we see the number of endemic mammal species by country.

This helps us to identify which countries have the most unique range of mammals — in a sense, the hotspots for mammal biodiversity. As we might expect, the three most diverse countries are island states. Indonesia has the largest number of unique mammals, with species.

Australia and Madagascar — both of which people often associate with high levels of unique biodiversity — also have more than endemic species. Brazil and Mexico complete the top five. Generally we see the greatest diversity in mammals across the Americas, Southeast Asia and Pacific. Of course, this only tells us half the story. To understand species most at risk of extinction we also need to know where endemic species are most threatened. In a related article we take a look at the distribution of endemic mammals threatened with extinction across the world.

One-quarter of mammal species are threatened with extinction. Indonesia is home to nearly of these species. In contrast, Sweden has only one, and Finland only two at risk. In our related post we saw how the diversity of mammal species varies across the world, and where the biodiversity hotspots are. But does this also reflect where mammals are most under threat? In the map we see the number of endemic mammal species which are threatened with extinction in the wild.

Indonesia has the most endemic mammals threatened with extinction: species. Australia — despite having the largest number of endemic mammals — has much fewer at risk: with 52 endemics 1-in-5 at risk of extinction. It makes sense to be most concerned about endemic species, or those with a very small geographical range. Once they are lost from these specific areas, they are lost forever. In this map you can explore the total number endemic and non-endemic of mammal species threatened in each country.

The broad picture is very similar to that of endemic species. The countries with the greatest total number of threatened mammals are in order : Indonesia, Madagascar, India, Mexico, and Brazil. Again, Europe has relatively low numbers of threatened mammal species; Sweden has only one, and Finland only two. Almost all countries have one or more mammal species at risk. They are the richest in biodiversity, but also where the threats are most severe.

As we looked at in a related article, the main pressures on mammals — particularly larger ones — is poaching animals for meat and body parts, and the expansion of agriculture.

We see them through the lens of human interactions: we see them communicate; play; and bond with other animals in the group. It has been shown that we feel a closer emotional response to animals if we see humanistic behaviors in them. Favouritism towards these large mammal species might be seen as leading with the heart. If we were to take a rational approach to conservation, would we prioritize differently?

The head and the heart might not be as conflicted as we think. This is because large mammals are the ones that are at greatest risk of extinction. For millennia, large mammals have been the first to go.

This is still the case today. Earth has been through five major extinctions. Retrieved November 11, from www. ScienceDaily shares links with sites in the TrendMD network and earns revenue from third-party advertisers, where indicated. Print Email Share. Boy or Girl? You Need a Chickadee Brain. Living Well. View all the latest top news in the environmental sciences, or browse the topics below:.