Friday, June 13, 2025

Something for people who have arachnophobia

Spider

There are so many (more than 10 million spiders per hectare), What If they decided to eat all the humans on Earth...

This is a delightfully eerie hypothetical — and believe it or not, some scientists have actually explored parts of this idea!

🕷️ How Many Spiders Are There?

Estimates suggest that there are roughly 25 million tonnes of spiders on Earth. That’s not individuals, but biomass. In terms of actual numbers, it's likely in the quadrillions — conservatively over 10 million spiders per hectare in many places, especially forests and grasslands.

🧍‍♂️How Much Do Humans Weigh?

Let’s say the average human weighs about 62 kg, and there are roughly 8 billion humans. That’s a total human biomass of:

62 kg × 8,000,000,000 = 496,000,000,000 kg (or 496 million tonnes)

🕷️🍽️ Can Spiders Eat That Much?

A 2017 study published in The Science of Nature estimated that spiders kill and consume 400–800 million tonnes of prey per year — mostly insects.

So if spiders collectively decided to eat humans instead of bugs, theoretically they could consume the entire human race in just under a year. 😨

But… Could They Actually Do It?

No, thankfully:

  • Spiders are mostly solitary.

  • They don’t hunt animals our size (except a few that eat birds, frogs, or small rodents).

  • They don’t work together in swarms (with rare exceptions).

  • We'd notice and fight back (hopefully).


In Summary:

  • Number of spiders: Likely in the quadrillions.

  • If they could and wanted to, spiders could eat all humans within a year.

  • But rest easy: They won’t.

Unless, of course… they change their minds. 🕷️😉

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model

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