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Spiders Could Eat Every Human On Earth In A Year

Spiders Could Eat Every Human On Earth In A Year

And still be hungry...

Michael Minay

Michael Minay

It's estimated that 55% of women and 18% of men have arachnophobia - expect that to reach 100% for both sexes after this article.

Biologists, Professor Klaus Birkhofer and Dr Martin Nyffeler, have estimated that spiders munch between 400 and 800 million tons of prey each year.

That's as much meat as found on all seven billion humans on this planet.

The boffins looked at the feeding patterns of 65 species of spiders. Thankfully, at the moment, the meat content of a spider's diet mostly comes from lizards, birds and small mammals.

The report, published in the Science and Nature journal, stated: "The estimated standing biomass of the global spider community is impressive. There are few groups of terrestrial predaceous arthropods than can compare with spiders in terms of abundance and biomass.

"We hope that these estimates and their significant magnitude raise public awareness and increase the level of appreciation for the important global role of spiders in terrestrial food webs."

Basically, in simple English, there are few spider-like groups of animals that have a similar food consumption and, although they could happily digest us over a year, we should appreciate what they do for the food chain.

What makes the fear worse, is the size of some of the little eight-legged freaks. An Australian animal welfare centre captured this huge beast last year.

Credit: Barnyard Betty's Rescue

That would take, what? Like, a couple of minutes to swallow us up.

Or how about this one? It can be found in the Dominican Republic and is called a 'Cacata'.

Apparently, the bite is not poisonous to humans, but the bite is quite painful. Right, so it bites, great. So, it could fancy having a nibble on us if it wanted to.

Not wanting to freak you out, but BT recently did some research on Britain's most poisonous spiders.

Top of the shop was the false widow spider which came over from the Canary Islands, and can now be found in southern and eastern coastal areas. One unlucky person's account featured burning sensations, stabbing pains and flu-like symptoms after being bitten.

There was also the mouse spider which, after biting, can leave a large pimple with a puss-head and red inflammation.

The wasp spider, a newcomer to the UK, has a bite which can cause immediate pain and spread to the groin.

Even the common money spider can leave localised redness and swelling if it has bitten someone.

This is one of the more horrifying articles on the 'web' these days (no apologies on the pun).

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: Spiders