A recent study has found that spiders can eat between 440 to 880 million tons of prey per year. Or in other words, if hungry, the spiders can eat us all! Luckily, they eat insects for the most part, although the larger ones also eat small mammals, lizards and birds.
A recent entomological survey of North Carolina homes turned up spiders in 100 per cent of them, including 68 per cent of bathrooms and more than three-quarters of bedrooms.
The study, which was written by European scientists Martin Nyffeler and Klaus Birkhofer, observed that there are 45,000 individual species of spiders that have been identified thus far with a combined weight of 25 million metric tons.
According to the study, there are an average of 131 spiders per square meter around the globe, however, if they get ideal conditions, then the density can soar up to 1000 per square meter! It is likely that at least one spider is staring at you right now, sizing you up from a darkened corner of the room.
They could, theoretically, eat every single human on earth within one year. The total biomass of all adult humans on Earth is estimated to be 287 million tons, which is quite less than the amount of food eaten by spiders in a given year. In other words, if hungry, the spiders would eat all of us!.
The study also suggests that it would take approximately 2,000 pounds of these species to consume a 200-pound man in one day. But keep this in mind that this is probably never going to happen as it is highly unlikely that the spiders would ever revolt against the humans.
