Spiders could eat us all in one year if they wanted to!

Martin Nyffeler and Klaus Birkhofer published their estimate in the Science of Nature earlier this month, and the number they arrived at is frankly shocking: The world’s spiders consume somewhere between 360 million and 725 million tonnes of prey in any given year. Which means that spiders eat at least as much meat as all 7 billion humans on the planet combined, who the authors note consume about 360 million tonnes of meat and fish each year. The total biomass of all adult humans on Earth is estimated to be 260 million tonnes.

I will never look at a spider the same way again, I’m sure those little beggars are planning something!