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Originally Posted by tachybaptus  according to our resident entomologist at work 9 out of every 10 organisms is an insect - its his justification for every pay rise request as he says he has to work harder on his surveys than we do! |
Multi-cellular land organisms, very probably. But I think bacteria and plankton outnumber the insects.
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Originally Posted by Paul mabbott I've never been quite sure what a 'billion' is - seems to mean different things to different people. A thousand million - 1,000,000,000? or ten million - 10,000,000? or two million - 2,000,000.
Quite a lot  obviously but we need to know ...  |
The traditional English (and possibly European) definition of a billion is a million million - that's 1,000,000,000,000. However, these days the American definition of one thousand million (1,000,000,000) is pretty much universally accepted. It's certainly what economists and scientists would mean when they use the word.
Dave P.