Ants v. Cats – A Moral Dilemma

So, last time, I mentioned that I had a background project in the works that involved some of the most ridiculous math I’d ever done, right? Cool, well, some backstory.

Our current living situation is a little weird. Mandy (girlfriend extraordinaire) and I share a house with technically two other roommates and a gaggle of children. The children are present because, during weekdays, the house also operates as a nursery or daycare run by one of the aforementioned roommates. That meant that while I was home for a while between work seasons, there were nursery workers running around and the need for ice breakers arose. It’s an oldie but a goodie, meaning I resort to it often, but I enjoy asking, “If you could have one super power, what would it be?” I’m sure we’ve all given or answered that one once or twice in our own time. And it worked!

It also started a trend. So, every now and then while things were slow at the nursery (ie our house), I’d pop in with another dorky, speculative question. After a few of these, we arrived at a particularly juicy one: “If you had to choose, would you rather make all cats in the world the size of ants, or all ants in the world the size of cats?” I urge you to think on it too, in fact. Go on, I’ll wait…

Have your answer?

Sweet. Well, then you should also know that if you picked ants becoming the size of cats, you’re painfully, horrendously, ineffably, woefully, deliriously incorrect.

She, quite sensibly, choose to make all cats on the planet the size of ants. A sizeable loss for the cat-lovers among us, no doubt, but at the cost of saving the planet. Since I thought it was funny, I brought the question to Mandy, who said the above horrible answer AND tried to justify it. “Aww, but what will the anteaters eat?” was one point, that still thoroughly vexes me.

Anyway, I got so wrapped up in debating with her just how awful a sudden influx of cat-sized ants would be to the planet that I resorted to doing math. Like, actual hardcore arithmetic. Y’all, I wound up doing (and am still doing) more math in my free time than I ever have in my whole academic life. So, if I may, I’m going to present just some of the preliminary findings in my research and calculations.

As it turns out, there are an estimated 1 Quadrillion ants (1,000,000,000,000,000) on the planet right at this very moment, while there are a far more modest estimated 600 Million cats (600,000,000) at present. That means, there are about one and two-thirds millions times as many ants as there are cats on the planet right now. (# of Ants = # of Cats x 1,666,666.67)

The first thought I had when considering this is all we’re covering here today, which was: What would the seismic impact be of a sudden weight shift like that be? Like, forgetting ecological, topographical, geological, societal, and all the other -al’s, just the strain of all the suddenly added weight. What would that do to the planet’s tectonic plates?

The ultimate answer is: I’m not sure, but it would likely lead to some earthquakes in the short term; and I’d imagine, even more in the long term. As I’ve found, studies have been done on this sort of thing regarding shifting waters linked to rains and monsoon seasons, and have concluded that those seasonal occurrences lead to seismic activity (albeit small). For example, the study observes that monsoon season affects quake frequency around the Himalayas, so I did some math.

To calculate the weight of a monsoon, feasibly the amount of weight/pressure that reliably affects seismic activity, I took the given land area of India (3,287,263 sq. km), used the upper limit of expected rain fall over a monsoon season (300 mm), and ran those numbers through a rain fall calculator. The result showed a total deposit of 986,178,900,000,000 liters of water hitting the ground, which weighs roughly 21,741,523,121,299 lbs.

So, if the weight of a monsoon affects seismic activity to a noticeable degree, and we have that, then we know the amount of weight needed to affect seismic activity is somewhere around twenty-two trillion pounds (21,741,523,121,299 lbs).

Ants weigh anywhere between 1mg and 5mg, so we’ll call their average 3mg.

Cats, feral and domestic, on average, weigh between 8lbs and 10lbs. So we’ll call their average 9lbs.

For perspective, to have the equivalent to one pound, it takes 453,592mg; which means that the average cat weighs the same as 1,360,776 average ants. To put it another way, your average cat weighs x1,360,776 that of your average ant. To put it ANOTHER way, every ant that becomes the size of a cat means an increase in weigh of 136,077,600%

Finally, taking the estimates on how many ants there are and how many cats there are on the planet today, and knowing their average weights per individual ant or cat, we know that there are roughly 6,138,000,000 lbs of ants on the planet right now, and approximately 5,400,000,000 lbs of cats on the planet right now; meaning that if one were to make all the ants on the planet instantaneously the size of cats, that would mean a sudden addition of almost eight and a half Quadrillion pounds (8,352,436,950,000,000lbs) to the planet’s surface.

If it takes 22 Trillion pounds to start seismic activity, then to be clear, to be very frank…<ahem>…the sudden weight of ants WOULD SHIT ON THAT NUMBER.

8,352,436,950,000,000 / 21,737,365,862,331 = 384.24
[I shaved some decimals off of the result there because it does not at all matter. What matters is…]

The weight of ants after the switch is over three hundred and eighty TIMES what it takes to cause noticeable seismic activity; not to even mention that the weight change would be instantaneous rather than over the course of a month like with monsoon seasons. Trying to figure out THAT angle of the impact might mean learning how to calculate Newtons and Joules, which will take someone smarter than me to figure out, but let’s all safely assume that before the ants would even be able to tear our cities, infrastructure, and eco systems apart, their arrival alone would probably be equivalent to several million nuclear bombs…

I also have an anthology with Bards & Sages Publishing coming out this month, which is pretty rad. So stay tuned for that. It’s a story I’m pretty fond of.

Anyway, until next time. Ciao.