The Arachnid Overlords

Did you know that the world's spiders consume 400-800 million tons of prey every year? This means that all the spiders on Earth, put together, eat more than the weight of the entire human population each year.

According to the World Health Organization, the collective weight of all the humans on Earth was 316 million tons in 2005, which means our eight-legged friends consume between 1.2 and 2.5 times the amount of the total human weight in food per annum.

Their prey, primarily insects and springtails, are consumed in astonishing numbers.

In comparison, it is estimated that whales in the world's oceans consume somewhere between 280-500 million tons of food annually.

This gives an interesting perspective on the sheer scale of global arachnid predation.

They play a crucial role in managing insect populations on a planetary scale and are hugely significant within Earth's terrestrial ecosystems..