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Live a life as a fish

RareOdds: 1 in 134.6 million

Trillions of fish, most of them small and deep. The story follows one kind at random. About 1.3 × 10¹³ fish are alive right now.

Sources: Extrapolated from ocean fish biomass estimates of 0.8–2 billion tonnes; only known to an order of magnitude (order of magnitude only).

Your life

  1. Day 1 · You are a fish egg drifting in the twilight zone of the Atlantic, one of thousands.
  2. Day 4 · You hatch as a larva, a few millimetres long, near the surface.
  3. Month 2 · You settle into the twilight zone, 500 metres down, where daylight is a faint blue haze.
  4. Month 3 · Each night, lanternfish like you rise toward the surface to feed and sink again before dawn.
  5. Month 6 · Light organs along your belly glow, hiding your silhouette from hunters below.
  6. Year 1 · You spawn in the open sea.
  7. Year 2 · You have outlived almost everyone you hatched with.

Get rebornEvery number and its source

Questions

What are the odds of being reborn as a fish?

Odds: 1 in 134.6 million. Trillions of fish, most of them small and deep. The story follows one kind at random. (Extrapolated from ocean fish biomass estimates of 0.8–2 billion tonnes; only known to an order of magnitude.)

What are my odds of being reborn as a human?

About 1 in 210 billion if any animal can be drawn. There are roughly 8.2 billion people, but around 1.3 sextillion copepods, 440 quintillion soil nematodes and 10 quintillion insects. Among mammals and birds only, the odds improve to about 1 in 21.

What is the most common animal on Earth?

By head count, tiny crustaceans called copepods (about 1.3 × 10²¹, an order-of-magnitude estimate), then soil nematodes (about 4.4 × 10²⁰, van den Hoogen et al. 2019). That is why the true-odds draw almost always makes you something small.

The odds, animal by animal

Copepod Soil nematode Insect Ant Antarctic krill Honey bee Wild bird Bat Chicken Wild rodent Human House sparrow Cow Dog Elephant Blue whale Giant panda