3079: Air Fact

Air Fact

|< < Prev #3079 (April 21, 2025) Next > >|

Title text: 'Wow, that must be why you swallow so many of them per year!' 'No, that's spiders. You swallow WAY more ants.'

|< < Prev Random Explanation Next > >|

Explanation

This explanation is incomplete: Created by a MICROSCOPIC ANT. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Microbiologist Megan tells Cueball that every cubic meter of air contains thousands of microscopic ants. This is a tall tale. Adult workers in some species of the genus Carebara, the smallest known ants, can be 0.8 millimeters long, just below the 1.0 mm upper bound of what some consider "microscopic". It is therefore possible for an air sample to contain microscopic ants. However, given the subterranean, cryptic habitats typical of Carebara species, it is highly unlikely that these ants would appear in any, never mind every, air sample. Initially incredulous, Cueball accepts Megan's fib as a fact, because he doesn't have any easy way to assess what samples of air contain.

Air contains many microscopic particles, including minerals, plastics, combustion products, salt, water, pollen, spores, bacteria, fungi, and viruses. There are indeed microorganisms floating in the air, and getting air samples that will allow these microorganisms to be identified and quantified is indeed hard. Methods, with specialized collecting devices, exist that take (one hopes) known volumes of air and deposit the particles contained in that air onto sticky surfaces which are then viewed under the microscope, or onto culture media which are then incubated. The methods are time-consuming and dependent on specialized knowledge (e.g., the identification of pollen grains or spores by surface features under the microscope), and are subject to numerous biases. For example, "sticky surface" methods will likely miss bacteria, and fail to identify 'nondescript' objects, whereas culture-based methods will not detect anything that will not grow on the selected medium. The joke is that microbiologists are tempted to make up stories about what's in the air, because most people lack the data or skills to fact-check the stories.

Micro particle concentration in air varies considerably; 100 to 100,000 bacteria per cubic meter, and 100 to 1000 fungal spores per cubic meter are typical. In the comic, Megan could have sampled a 100 cubic centimeter (0.1 liter) space of air and found 1 microbe (e.g., a bacterium, a mold spore, a protozoan cyst) in it. If she assumed that this was a representative sample, Megan could extrapolate from this datum to say that there are 10,000 microbes (rather than ants) for every 1 cubic meter (1,000,000 cubic centimeters or 1000 liters). Randall has made numerous comics about dubious extrapolations, but in this case, Megan's number is within the range of microbial counts that have been made in various indoor and outdoor environments.

The title text refers to the commonly believed myth that people swallow 8 spiders a year in their sleep. Though oft quoted, it has no basis in fact, and was actually made up to see if people would repeat the rumor without checking the original source. Bona fide ants, microscopic or otherwise, would be no more likely to enter a human's mouth than spiders, while Megan's microscopic ants would mostly wind up in the lungs, not the stomach, where (one hopes) the immune system would take care of them.

Transcript

[Megan, with her palm out, is talking to Cueball.]

Megan: Did you know that every cubic meter of air contains over 10,000 microscopic ants?

Cueball: Wow, really?

Cueball: I had no idea.

[Caption below the panel:]

The fact that taking air samples is hard presents microbiologists with a constant temptation.

  Add comment        Create topic (use sparingly)       Refresh 

Discussion

average person eats 3 spiders a year" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted” 172.68.7.184 15:19, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

🔥🔥🔥🔥 Broseph (talk) 15:26, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

^{[citation needed]}172.68.174.138 15:52, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

This is one of those factoids like "Over 5% of the population has an above average number of fingers."172.68.245.136 16:16, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

That factoid sounds true. Assuming there are more people who have fewer than ten fingers than those who have extra fingers (some people have whole hands missing, but extra digits to my knowledge normally only come in ones and twos), then the average is slightly less than ten, and the ten-fingered vast majority of people have an above-average number of fingers, certainly more than 5% of the population. 141.101.98.164 19:10, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

I have more than the average number of legs (for a human), as I famously insisted once in my mathematics class. And still do. 162.158.74.94 22:34, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't really get the way the title text is written. Why is "so many ants" assumed to be a small number, like the number of spiders? Barmar (talk) 17:47, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

If the factoid in the comic were true, the fact that the average person has a tidal volume of about half a litre, and takes between 12-20 breaths per minute means that they breathe in and out about 10 cubic metres per day. That’s over 100,000 ants. The fact that you are talking about “per year” implies that the rate is a reasonable number per year, not over 36 million. It’s like comparing the speed of continents to the speed of a car. 172.68.0.190 20:03, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Because that's part of the joke. 172.71.241.123 08:49, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

It can be 4 spiders per second, but only where the spider streams are the densest. One per second is more typical, though more at night. 198.41.227.166 03:15, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

The term "microscopic ants" supposedly refers to viruses and other microorganisms, not actual tiny ants. The actual concentration of airborne germs is pretty much in that ballpark, so it's not about sampling bias, it's about framing. 162.158.103.36 17:00, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

There isn't even such a thing as a "microscopic ant". The smallest ant species is 0.8mm long. That's tiny, but easily visible without aid. And if there were 10,000 of them in a cubic meter of air, you'd notice. It would be like walking through a thick swarm of gnats. Barmar (talk) 17:47, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

If taking, and more importantly analysing, air samples is so hard then how can we be so sure there aren't microscopic airborne ants? Checkmate. 172.70.162.52 10:18, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Speaking for myself, I don't understand what would be difficult about taking air samples. Currently the article claims it's sampling bias, but why should that be anymore difficult with air than with e.g. soil?172.69.67.22 18:14, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Tried to address this ... 172.71.146.123 19:23, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

It's difficult to take an exact volume of air and analyze it's content. The less you care about how close to exact volume you took, the easier it is. -- Hkmaly (talk) 05:07, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Doesn't air expand to fit whichever volume the recipient has? I don't think that's the problem.. the problem is sampling in a way that is representative enough, since air is a very heterogeneous mix of a massive size and the concentrations are constantly changing, even small changes in temperature cause changes in density that create small convection currents that push everything around and affect the composition of the surrounding area --172.71.148.154 12:39, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

There's nothing difficult about taking air samples - I do it myself about every 3-5 seconds. More, when exercising. 172.71.178.157 08:53, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

And the nostrils contain very good analysis devices. Barmar (talk) 16:26, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Microscopic wasps, on the other hand: surprisingly commonplace. Many species are too small to be seen with the naked eye, and if Megan took her samples near hedgerows in summer, there could have been some microscopic wasps in every sample cubic metre. Probably a few orders of magnitude less than 10,000. 141.101.98.219 19:25, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

"Many species are too small to be seen with the naked eye" - Wikipedia claims that fairy wasps are the smallest flying insect at 0.15mm, which is large enough to see if you get close enough. 172.68.26.39 22:55, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't see any evidence Megan is referring to microbes as microscopic ants. As a microbiologist, if she meant a bacterium, etc. it seems like she would have just said so, especially since the ants claim is made again in the title text. She's preying on Cueball's gullibility and unfamiliarity with the subject for her own amusement, to convince him the air is overrun with literal microscopic ants which don't exist and wouldn't be in the air if they did. Likewise the paragraph about extrapolation errors seems unnecessary as well. She's not making a sampling error - she's just making the whole thing up. Just my take. 172.69.17.211 22:06, 21 April 2025 (UTC)Pat

This comic is dumb and makes no sense. 172.70.230.37 (talk) 01:34, 22 April 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Did you write 'comic' when you meant 'comment'?172.71.178.157 08:53, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Literally nobody in this talk page understands the joke. Randall isn't going to notice you just because you'll defend any slop he puts out. 172.68.55.48 10:38, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Except that's literally untrue. And your second sentence has nothing to do with anything.172.70.86.133 13:31, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

This is an interesting arguement 162.158.137.163 (talk) 22 April 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The use of "cubic meter" here is pretty straightforward, but it did make me think of ways that units can be poorly communicated to make something sound incredible when it's actually true and not all that impressive (e.g., SMBC #2097). If Megan had instead said "cubic tonne", it would still sound intuitively similar to "cubic meter" but would represent over 800 cubic meters (taking STP at sea level) or arguably up to 10,000 cubic meters if you count all the atmosphere up to the Karman line. (The volume of the atmosphere is around 5.2e19 cubic meters.) While the median average cubic meter of air obviously contains zero ants, the estimated total of 20 quadrillion ants on Earth yields a mean average of 0.0004 ants per cubic meter, which works out to up to 4 "ants per cubic tonne" of air. And if we go a little further, it gets even more interesting. Let's stick with "cubic meter" of air rather than cubic tonne. If we assume that the average ant is no "taller" than 1 cm, then virtually all those 20 quadrillion ants are necessarily contained to a volume of air no greater than the land surface area of Earth times 1 cm, which gives you a volume of 1.49e12 cubic meters of air which could possibly contain ants. The added internal volume of ant colonies, while larger than you might think, is negligible compared to the land surface area of the planet, so this actually yields a whopping 13,400 ants per "average" cubic meter, astonishingly close to Megan's claim. 172.70.47.127 16:21, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Cubic tonne is a bizarre measurement. A tonne is a measure of mass - 1000kg - about the same an imperial ton - 2240lb. The volume of a tonne depends on the density of the substance. I mean, I know Americans refer to fluid ounces, but cubic tonne? --172.71.241.72 13:51, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Oh, a cubic tonne would absolutely be a bizarre and cursed measurement. But, like "fluid ounces", it is a marginally valid way of using a weight to indicate a volume by reference to a substance of known density, so it would be just the sort of trick that Megan might use in this scenario. 172.68.245.112 16:36, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

The explanation needs to mention flying ants. They're certainly not microscopic, they only fly for one or two days a year and there are unlikely to be 10000 in any given cubic metre of air [citation needed], but they're definitely relevant. 141.101.99.126 09:58, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

There might be one or two days, or not. 172.69.195.172 15:43, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
        Add comment