{"id":16493,"date":"2026-06-13T10:24:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T10:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=16493"},"modified":"2026-06-13T04:40:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T04:40:24","slug":"scientists-may-have-under-counted-how-many-of-us-humans-are-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=16493","title":{"rendered":"Scientists may have under-counted how many of us humans are on earth."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I love it! Hit the link and read the whole article – it’s only another five paragraphs. I think this is very possible; when I lived in Jamaica the government basically admitted that they were not sure of the Island population and likely were undercounting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Homo sapiens<\/em> is the most successful mammalian species in Earth history, and it\u2019s not even close. The species thrives on nearly every continent, in a variety of adverse conditions, and outnumbers the second-place contender\u2014the rat\u2014by at least a cool billion<\/u>. However, a 2025 study suggests that the impressive nature of humanity\u2019s proliferation may have been vastly underreported.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most estimates place Earth\u2019s<\/a> human population at around 8.2 billion, but Josias L\u00e1ng-Ritter\u2014a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University in Finland and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications<\/em><\/a>\u2014<\/em>claims that these estimates could be underrepresenting rural areas by a significant margin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were surprised to find that the actual population living in rural areas is much higher than the global population data indicates\u2014depending on the dataset, rural<\/a> populations have been underestimated by between 53 percent to 84 percent over the period studied,\u201d L\u00e1ng-Ritter said in a press statement<\/a>. \u201cThe results are remarkable, as these datasets have been used in thousands of studies and extensively support decision-making, yet their accuracy has not been systematically evaluated.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love it! Hit the link and read the whole article – it’s only another five paragraphs. I think this is very possible; when I lived in Jamaica the government basically admitted that they were not sure of the Island population and likely were undercounting. Homo sapiens is the most successful mammalian species in Earth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16495,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16493\/revisions\/16495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}