: How are animal populations counted? Like how do you know how many owls there are on Earth?

Question

: How are animal populations counted? Like how do you know how many owls there are on Earth?

In: Biology

Answer 1

1. Find the area that the animals are found in.
2. Divide that area up into subsections.
3. Pick a small sampling of those sections at random.
4. Count the number of animals in those sections.
5. Take the average number of animals in each section of land and multiply by the number of sections. That gives you a reasonable estimate of how many animals there are there in total.

There are some more advanced techniques you can use, but that’s generally the gist of it. In essence, you’re trying to understand how likely you are to find an animal in a given area to understand how many you can reasonably expect to be in a larger area.