WitzEnd, thanks for the excellent photo. The background reinforces one of my points. Note that the scene occurred during the height of summer, shown by the green grass and abundant green foliage on the trees. The corn being harvested for silage was cut early, even before being mature, to maximize the moisture content. If the Amish had been harvesting field corn for the grain, there would be no leaves on the trees and perhaps snow on the ground.
P-Kasso, the answer to your question may be in part geographical. On land, herbivores hold a large edge, at least among the larger land creatures. Everywhere, either in cultivated areas or wild regions, there are herds of grazing animals, of all sorts. There are few herds or packs of predators or scavangers -- some wolves, some lions, some hyenas, and so on; but in numbers, clearly far fewer than the herbivores.
Man is a carnivore, or more exactly an omnivore, which shifts the balance back toward carnivores because there are so many humans around. In the far north there are polar bears, mainly carnivores because there are vast areas where no herbaceous plants grow, hence no herds of herbivores (though near the Arctic Circle are herds of reindeer and caribou); but there are not very many polar bears any more, so they are not a significant factor in the count. Other bears, further south, are all omnivores, from black bears up to grizzly bears (virtually the same as polar bears, but brown). The bear's closest relative in the animal world is the pig, which is an omnivore and which will eat anything. There are lots of pigs around, so bears, pigs, and humans shomewhat shift the balance back toward carnivores.
In the oceans, the balance shifts even more toward carnivores. Many, and I daresay most, fish species are either carnivores or omnivores. The larger the fish species, the more likely it is to be carnivorous. (Whales, which live on krill, are of course not fish but mammals -- but carnivorous, as krill are creatures something like shrimp.)
But the balance between carnivores/omnivores and herbivores is probably determined by a family you may not have considered: ants. There are perhaps 22,000 different species of ants, and ants exist almost everywhere. Ants, in total, make up from 15% to 25% of the terrestrial animal biomass, far outweighing anything else, including vertebrates. Some ants are exclusively herbivores, including those which live on fungus; but most ants are omnivores. The majority of ant species are predators, far outnumbering the species that are strict herbivores. Army ants, as you probably know, march in huge masses which overwhelm, kill, and totally strip any animal in their path.
Therefore, even though herds of herbivores abound in certain land areas, I think the vast abundance of carnivorous marine families and species, and the preponderance of ants in the terrestrial animal biomass, indicates that carnivores/omnivores substantially exceed herbivores on this planet.
An interesting sidelight of this is to recognize what happens to the prey of most carnivores. Humans in the main eat dead and often preserved flesh of other creatures. But elsewhere, the prey of carnivores is generally eaten alive, or dies while being eaten. Certainly nothing in the ocean stops to cook its prey. On land, while some carnivores are scavangers, most are predators and swallow their prey alive or kill it during the process of eating it. Some, such as certain wasps, spiders, and snakes, paralyze (but do not kill) their prey in preparation for a leisurely meal.
The other group I have not mentioned is birds, which altogether constitute a significant fraction of the global biomass. Some species survive on seeds, berries, fruit, and the like. But most birds are predators (some are scavangers), which live on anytihhng from worms to small animals such as mice and rabbits. If there was any doubt remaining, after the preceding explanation, I think that considering the birds demonstrates with finality that carnivores/omnivores predominate -- wheether we are counting numbers of species, or numbers of creatures, or total living biomass.
