It would only take spiders 1 year to eat everyone on Earth

(Image credit: Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

published 28 March 2017

The next time you spot a spider and are headed for it with a shoe, ask yourself if you really want to be squishing a critter that could theoretically band together with all of its arachnid brethren and wipe out the entire human race in a single year.

No, this isn't a scene from Tarantula — it's a new study published in Science of Nature, which found that the world's spiders consume between 400 million and 800 million tons of prey every year. The total adult human biomass on Earth is estimated to be 278 million tons. You do the math.

Part of the spider's power is that it is everywhere. Everywhere. A recent study of homes in North Carolina, for example, found that 100 percent contained spiders, with 68 percent of bathrooms and 75 percent of bedrooms housing an eight-legged buddy or two, The Washington Post reports. If you piled all the spiders in the world on a scale, the terrifying swarm would weigh the equivalent of 478 Titanic ocean liners, or about 25 million tons.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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