Spiders Could Eat Every Human on Earth in a Year – The NOPE Files
Arachnophobia. Some people have it for good reason… like take for instance this interesting bit of news. Recently a study was undertaken by Martin Nyffeler and Klaus Birkhofer regarding what number we would come to if all the food eaten by the world’s entire spider population in a single year was tallied up.
The duo published their estimate in the journal the Science of Nature earlier this month, and it concluded that the world’s spiders consume somewhere between 400 million and 800 million tons of prey in any given year.
The Washington Post put it further in perspective for us. That number means that spiders eat at least as much meat as all 7 billion humans on the planet combined, who the authors note consume about 400 million tons of meat and fish each year.
Or, for a slightly more disturbing comparison: The total biomass of all adult humans on Earth is estimated to be 287 million tons. Even if you tack on another 70 million-ish tons to account for the weight of kids, it’s still not equal to the total amount of food eaten by spiders in a given year, exceeding the total weight of humanity.
In other words, spiders could eat all of us and still be hungry. Another fun fact: The world’s spider population would weigh in at 29 million tons. That’s roughly the weight of 5 Titanics.
Sleep with one eye open.
Categorized:News
