if you are thinking of animals, JBS Haldane had it right: god has an inordinate fondness for beetles.

But in the scheme of things, animals aren’t really that big a deal:

> Of the 550 gigatons of biomass carbon on Earth, animals make up about 2 gigatons, with insects comprising half of that and fish taking up another 0.7 gigatons. Everything else, including mammals, birds, nematodes and mollusks are roughly 0.3 gigatons, with humans weighing in at 0.06 gigatons.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-make-110000...

This was a shock for me when I learned of this. It's a great way to show people who think humanity somehow doesn't have the capability to have an effect on greenhouse gas emissions for example. We have totally and completely reshaped the earth in a matter of centuries in what should normally take thousands or tens of thousands of years.