Credit: The Conversation Beware arachnophobes! Spiders could eat everyone on the planet in one year – and they’d still have room for more
A new study has revealed the world’s arachnids (spiders) eat 400 to 800 million tonnes of prey every year – more than the weight of the entire human population of 287 million tonnes.
One study has estimated that there are an average of 131 spiders per square metre around the world.
While spiders are still outnumbered by ants, the amount they consume is at least as much as humans – who eat 400 million tonnes of meat and fish a year.
Published in the journal The Science of Nature, the researchers also calculated the total mass of all the spiders in the world.