• Question: How many cells are there in our whole body in total?

    Asked by superstar to Jake, James, Pete, Senga, Simonne on 8 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Pete Gwynne

      Pete Gwynne answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      it’s a little bit hard to tell exactly because they’re all different sizes and weights. it’s somewhere around 50 trillion though, or 50,000,000,000,000. That’s about one cell for every grain of sugar in 2 million bags (i think, if my maths is right. sometimes it isn’t).

      that’s just the human cells, though – there are ten times more bacteria than there are human cells in your body. they mostly live on your skin and in your guts.

    • Photo: Jake Langham

      Jake Langham answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      @Pete Wow, we have ten times more bacteria than human cells? I’m learning here. Is that because they’re much smaller?

    • Photo: Senga Robertson

      Senga Robertson answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      Hi Superstar

      Pete actually told you an amazing fact about microbes that I was going to tell you…I shouldn’t have spent so long making a snap chat story today and answered my questions more quickly! ha ha

      And he is also right that the number of human cells you have in your body does depend on lots of things like your age, height, weight and genetics….and how scientists work it out. So I asked the internet and this is what I found out-If it’s worked out based on body weight an adult male of average weight is predicted to have 70 trillion human cells (woah), if they work it out based on volume (so how many cubic centimetres the average male body is) then it’s 17.2 trillion. So it’s a pretty big difference in calculations! I think that means that we don’t know exactly, it depends on lots of things BUT either way…….I can’t count up to 1 trillion (not even close) ha ha. Actually, do you know how long it would take for someone to count to 1 trillion out loud?…are you ready for this?

      31,709.79 YEARS!!!!! and that’s if you counted for 24 hours a day, every day!

      Let’s not try to count to 1 trillion! ha ha

      Senga 🙂

    • Photo: Simonne Weeks

      Simonne Weeks answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      Loads. Think about your skin. It’s made up of layers and layers of cells to cover your whole body. Think about each organ you have. Each one is made of millions of cells each with a specific function.

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