183,000 Giant Tortoises, Two Dozen People: 10 Places Where Animals Outnumber Humans

Aoshima is a tiny island off the coast of Ehime Prefecture, known in Japan as Cat Island. Live Science reported in April 2026 that about 80 feral cats share the island with three elderly residents, roughly 27 cats for every person.

A decade earlier there were about 200 cats. A mass spaying-and-neutering program in 2018 cut that number by more than half, and no kittens are known to have been born on the island since. As recently as 2017, Aoshima had 13 residents.

The Falklands sit in the South Atlantic, and farming there mostly means wool. According to the Falkland Islands Government, the islands’ 70 farms graze just under half a million sheep. The 2021 census counted 3,662 usual residents, which works out to roughly 135 sheep for every person.

A new census is being prepared, so the human number may change soon.

Sable Island is a long strip of sand in the Atlantic, protected as a national park reserve off Nova Scotia. Parks Canada puts the wild horse population at about 420, and its own records show the herd swinging between 374 and 590 in recent years.

According to the Sable Island Institute, Parks Canada keeps two staff on the island year-round, and up to 25 people come and go at busier times. That is about 210 horses for every year-round resident. In winter the beaches fill up as well: a federal survey estimated that 76,600 grey seal pups were born there in 2021.

Aldabra is a remote coral atoll in the Indian Ocean, and nobody lives there permanently. A study published in Ecology and Evolution in 2026 estimated its giant tortoise population at 183,274, based on surveys from 2018 to 2021, the highest estimate ever made for the atoll.

The only people on Aldabra are about two dozen scientific and support staff at the Seychelles Islands Foundation research station. That is roughly 7,600 tortoises for every person, and the tortoises have the run of the place.

Ōkunoshima, a small island in the Seto Inland Sea, is known in Japan as Rabbit Island. Japan’s Ministry of the Environment says about 700 rabbits live wild across the whole island, and a ministry count in the summer of 2018 saw up to 921 at once.

The 2020 national census counted 21 residents. That makes roughly 33 rabbits for every person.

New Zealand still has more sheep than people, just not by as much as it used to. Sheep numbers peaked at 70.3 million in 1982, when there were about 22 sheep for every New Zealander, as the AP reported.

On 30 June 2025, Stats NZ counted 23.3 million sheep, and the country’s population reached 5,357,300 in June 2026. That still makes about 4.3 sheep per person, and on a country road in Otago it can feel like more.

Mongolia is one of the last countries where many families still move with their herds across open grassland. At the end of 2025, the national livestock count came to 58.09 million head, against a population of 3,591,120, about 16 animals for every person.

Horses alone outnumber people: the same count put them at 5.1 million, or about 1.4 horses per person.

Scotland’s June 2025 agricultural census counted 296,073 sheep in Shetland, along with 1,135 horses, a figure that includes the islands’ famous ponies. On 30 June 2025, Shetland’s population was 22,710.

That makes about 13 sheep for every islander, and about one horse or pony for every 20 people.

The Norwegian Polar Institute’s monitoring program estimates about 22,000 Svalbard reindeer, based on surveys published in 2019. Statistics Norway counted 2,512 people in Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund at the start of 2026.

That is roughly 9 reindeer for every resident, and the reindeer do not keep to the tundra: they graze right outside the buildings in Longyearbyen.

Midway Atoll, in the middle of the Pacific, is a U.S. national wildlife refuge with no permanent civilian residents. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service says the December 2025 ground count found 589,623 Laysan albatross nests and 28,246 black-footed albatross nests, 617,869 in all. Each nest belongs to a breeding pair.

The atoll is home to a small community of about 50 staff, volunteers and contractors, which works out to roughly 24,700 albatrosses per person, the biggest ratio on this list.