Top 10 Most Indispensable Animals for Humans and Nature

Responsible for pollinating more than a third of all our food (apples, strawberries, nuts, coffee). Without bees, our food supply would collapse.

The unsung hero of the soil: it turns over earth, aerates the ground and converts rotting material into fertile humus in which all our crops grow.

The ultimate landscape architect. Beaver dams retain water during droughts, reduce flooding downstream and create wetlands for countless other species.

A single bat can devour thousands of mosquitoes and harmful agricultural insects per night, saving millions of liters of chemical pesticides.

The foundation of almost all marine life. Phytoplankton also produces more than half of all the oxygen on Earth – more than all the rainforests combined!

The cleanup crew of the forest. It spreads seeds, clears away carcasses and hunts harmful caterpillars and insects that damage trees.

The natural ally of every gardener and farmer: over its lifetime it eats thousands of aphids that would otherwise destroy plants and flowers.

Thanks to their extremely acidic stomach acid, they clean up carcasses full of anthrax, cholera and rabies, preventing dangerous disease outbreaks in nature.

Actively helps fight climate change: whale poop fertilizes phytoplankton that absorbs CO2, and a whale stores tons of carbon in its body during its lifetime.

Although they look like plants or rocks, they are tiny animals that build reefs home to 25% of all ocean life and protect coasts from storms.