Spiders could theoretically eat every human on Earth in one year
By Christopher Ingraham
March 28 at 7:00 AM
Spiders are quite literally all around us. A recent entomological survey of North Carolina homes turned up spiders in 100 percent of them, including 68 percent of bathrooms and more than three-quarters of bedrooms. There's a good chance at least one spider is staring at you right now, sizing you up from a darkened corner of the room, eight eyes glistening in the shadows.
Spiders mostly eat insects, although some of the larger species have been known to snack on lizards, birds and even small mammals. Given their abundance and the voraciousness of their appetites, two European biologists recently wondered: If you were to tally up all the food eaten by the world's entire spider population in a single year, how much would it be?
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.
More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/28/spiders-could-theoretically-eat-every-human-on-earth-in-one-year/?utm_term=.d04f75a237bc
= new reply since forum marked as read
They're not particularly choosy so that's something to keep in mind.
Jumpers usually can be recognized by their eye pattern of four median eyes with the two middle ones being the largest.
Here is an adorable jumper photographed by my Facebook friend Vida van der Walt:
:large.
She's so FLUFFY!!!
Most simply want to be left alone to raise their families just like us.
chased me around the room. It was the first time a spider scared me. I killed it. Later I found out that it was my warmth and it was mating season and that is why it was after me. I then felt really bad for killing it. Like I said though it actually chased me. Hmm, mating season, never thought a spider would find me attractive. 
They even eat each other. I'm fascinated by them and perhaps foolishly have passed up opportunities to kill them. They eat the ants! 
Of course I've carefully studied their pics for sometime and have killed some suspected black widows and brown recluses which are quite scary and dangerous.
wrapping leaky ductwork and ran into a couple that worried me. Otherwise, I have a live and let live attitude with all species with the exception of Rs.
You have my utmost respect...for many reasons.
