Although it is widely held that infections and eating difficulties are hallmarks of advanced dementia,25 there are few prospective data on the incidence of these complications. Over the course of 18 months, more than half of the residents in our study had infectious episodes, and 86% had eating problems.
So 10 billion people is the uppermost population limit where food is concerned. Because it's extremely unlikely that everyone will agree to stop eating meat, Wilson thinks the maximum carrying capacity of the Earth based on food resources will most likely fall short of 10 billion.
And in fact, âcarrying capacityâ in reference to a school bus or an elevator is not all that different from carrying capacity in reference to a population. On a school bus, the carrying capacity would be the maximum number of people that could safely fit. In ecological terms, carrying capacity is defined as the maximum number of a species that can sustainably live in a given area. In other words, a populationâs carrying capacity is the size at which a population can no longer grow due to lack of supporting resources. All populations have a carrying capacity, whether bacteria in a bottle or rabbits in a forest.