1in1t

Live a life as a rodent

EpicOdds: 1 in 67.3 billion

About 25 billion wild rodents. The story follows one kind at random. About 26 billion wild rodents are alive right now. Your odds of being reborn as one are 1 in 67.

Sources: Greenspoon et al. 2023, PNAS 120 (about 25–26 billion wild rodents).

Your life

  1. Day 1 · You are born pink and blind in a nest in a wheat field in Ukraine, one of a litter of six.
  2. Day 14 · Your eyes open.
  3. Week 4 · You leave the nest.
  4. Month 2 · An owl passes overhead in silence.
  5. Month 3 · You have your first litter. A house mouse can have one every three weeks.
  6. Month 8 · Winter.

Get rebornEvery number and its source

Questions

What are the odds of being reborn as a rodent?

Odds: 1 in 67.3 billion. About 25 billion wild rodents. The story follows one kind at random. (Greenspoon et al. 2023, PNAS 120 (about 25–26 billion wild rodents).)

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 Fish Wild bird Bat Chicken Human House sparrow Cow Dog Elephant Blue whale Giant panda