Report Says that Spiders Could Manage to Eat All Humans in Just a Year

Perhaps it’s not the most pleasant thought, but it is certainly fascinating. The Washington Post cites a new study in the Science of Nature journal from researchers Martin Nyffeler and Klaus Birkhofer that asserts that the world’s spider population eats more than the total biomass of humans each year.

Theoretically, spiders could devour humans in less than a year (if we were what they normally consumed). Or as The Washington Post puts it, “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.”

The article in the Science of Nature says that all of the world’s spider population manages to eat between 400 million and 800 million tons of prey in any given year. “For comparison, the human world population does consume an estimated 400 million tons of meat and fish annually,” the researchers document.

It’s amazing to think how many spiders are around us at all times. Since there are roughly 25 million tons of spiders on the earth, it makes sense that a recent study in North Carolina reveled that each home had at least one spider living in it “including 68 percent of bathrooms and more than three-quarters of bedrooms.”

If the thought that it’s likely a spider is in the room with you right now bothers you, just remember that we need spiders to feast on insect pests like mosquitoes!