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Live a life as a house sparrow

LegendaryOdds: 1 in 1.1 trillion

The most numerous wild bird on Earth, about 1.6 billion. About 1.6 billion house sparrows are alive right now.

Sources: Callaghan et al. 2021, PNAS 118: the house sparrow is the most abundant wild bird (~1.6 billion).

Your life

  1. Day 1 · You are an egg in a nest in a wall in a market in Delhi.
  2. Day 12 · You hatch and beg loudly. Your parents bring insects, not seeds, for growing chicks.
  3. Day 27 · You fledge.
  4. Autumn · Sparrows rarely travel far. Your whole life will happen within a couple of kilometres.
  5. Summer · You bathe in dust to clean your feathers, then chatter with the flock.
  6. Year 2 · You raise three broods in one summer.
  7. Year 3 · You are an old sparrow now.

Get rebornEvery number and its source

Questions

What are the odds of being reborn as a house sparrow?

Odds: 1 in 1.1 trillion. The most numerous wild bird on Earth, about 1.6 billion. (Callaghan et al. 2021, PNAS 118: the house sparrow is the most abundant wild bird (~1.6 billion).)

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 Wild rodent Human Cow Dog Elephant Blue whale Giant panda