Things you don't need to know…

Good one, bkrueger. I see there are a lot of things to delve into, but I fear some of it would eventually belong to the you know what forum here, which I don't visit.

an incarnation of pibbur who has just found one (.. eh…more) thing for which he has no answer.

@a pibbur But what if we take the number of living organisms into account? Aren't there more prokaryotes (or even just bacteria) than eukaryotes?

And I say "organism" on purpose, to avoid comparing the number of cells, which could probably not live independently in the case of the eukaryote

PS: I honestly don't know the answer, I'll try to find out

EDIT: the number of prokaryotes is apparently estimated to be 4 to 6 10^30, it's harder to find for eukaryotes because most articles are focused on the number of species and not the number of organisms. Which is understandable if we haven't identified them all…
Given their relative size and complexity, it's probably safe to say the prokaryotes win

I was underestimating them, there are unicellular eukaryote organisms (named protists) such as protozoa, unicellular algae, fungi or yeast. That makes them very courageous cookies.

No estimate found, even on the number of cells. But I'll argue that most of them have a prokaryote inside (the mitochondrion). So those bacteria and their cousins win there too with flying colours, even by counting the number of cells

Humans are insignificant, just one species, negligible mass and number of cells in comparison, and even each of those lives in symbiosis with what was probably a prokaryote. But maybe the comparison of this TV show makes sense 1) because we are the "dominant" species and thus we need to compare the rest of the living world to us, and 2) as an insignificant species we threaten quite a lot of others.

Anyway, always found that fascinating

PS: makes me want to watch again the wonderful series on Earth and nature by Attenborough.