Community Corner

Don’t Freak Out, But Spiders Are Hungry Enough To Eat Us All

A study of homes in North Carolina shows that spiders are everywhere. And, apparently, they eat like little piggies.

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Kimberly Johnson, Patch StaffVerified Patch Staff Badge
CHARLOTTE, NC -- There are spiders living in just about every room of the average house, according to a study of Raleigh homes. If that isn’t enough to give you the willies, think about this: The spiders of the world eat between 400 million and 800 millions tons of prey each year, according to research in the Science of Nature journal.

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These spidey facts, reported recently by The Washington Post, confirm every dark nightmare of my youth. “[S]piders eat at least as much meat as all 7 billion humans on the planet combined,” the Post article said.

The newspaper broke that fact down into even more unsettling detail: “The total biomass of all adult humans on Earth is estimated to be 287 million tons. Even if you tack on another 70 millions-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.”

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You can read the entire article, if you dare, here.

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