Spiders are some of the most terrifying creatures on the planet. They are so tiny, most are smaller than a raisin, but some spiders hold the power to take your life with a single bite. There are spiders on this planet (recluse spiders) whose venom causes necrosis, which means your skin cells will literally die and begin to fall off your body like you’re some sort of zombie corpse.
Contrary to what I said above, I’m not actually freaked out by spiders. Only black widows really shake me to my core, and I’ve only seen a handful of tarantulas in the wild (in Panama and Costa Rica) but they never freaked me out all that much…until now.
Christopher Ingraham of The Washington Post just threw down an extensive blog about spiders for the SF Chronicle and one statistic has shaken me to my core. It’s not his infographic that shows the total weight of spiders in the world is equivalent to the weight of 478 Titanic ships, or 29 million tons. My feeble mind cannot comprehend that many spiders on the planet so that doesn’t really phase me. What’s freaked me the fuck out is this one:
Martin Nyffeler and Klaus Birkhofer published their estimate in the journal the Science of Nature earlier this month, and the number they arrived at is frankly shocking: The world’s spiders consume somewhere between 400 million and 800 million tons of prey in any given year. That 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.
Spiders could eat all of humanity in just one year. Let that sink in.
The way I see it, the only reason the human race still exists is because spiders haven’t figured out how goddamn delicious we are yet. The second these spiders get wind that humans taste better than bugs we’re all fucked. Or, at least I assume we tasted better than bugs but can’t testify under oath because I’ve never actually eaten human, nor do I plan on it.
The number of spiders in your home right now is insane. This article notes that researchers surveyed homes in North Carolina and spiders were found in 100% of the homes. There wasn’t a single goddamn home without spiders, the same spiders that could eat all of humanity in under one yar.
If you still want to keep reading about spiders, and I encourage you to do this because you should know the threat we’re facing, just CLICK HERE to head on over to SF Chronicle.