Save us, Spiders Georg
March 28, 2017 8:42 AM   Subscribe

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? (Please note: the article is illustrated with gifs of spider nests being poked, if seeing those gives you the wiggins.)
posted by rewil (38 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
What is it like to be a spider?

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.

So let's all try eating 20 pounds of meat today and see if that clarifies anything.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:47 AM on March 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


Ok but could humans also eat all the spiders?
posted by bondcliff at 8:49 AM on March 28, 2017 [4 favorites]




(spoiler alert! for those wary of spider nest gifs , the answer is the headline (which is also in the url if you mouse over))
posted by Fig at 8:51 AM on March 28, 2017


Also, "Delightful Arachnids" is a good name for a ukulele and twee band.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:52 AM on March 28, 2017 [4 favorites]


Ok but could humans also eat all the spiders?

Pass the Heinz.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:54 AM on March 28, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yes, but how many spider shoes would they have to buy?
posted by lumpenprole at 8:59 AM on March 28, 2017




The world's spiders consume somewhere between 400 million and 800 million tons of prey in any given year.

This is the only useful sentence from the entire article. /arachnologist
posted by dhruva at 9:03 AM on March 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


"We hope that these estimates and their significant magnitude raise public awareness and increase the level of appreciation for the important global role of spiders in terrestrial food webs", says one of the authors of the study. Calculating how many humans they can eat seems to be perpetuating the knee jerk fear of spiders.
posted by dhruva at 9:09 AM on March 28, 2017


Ok but could humans also eat all the spiders?

If we put all the humans and all the spiders in a large clear tank and the two groups started eating each other, who would win?
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 9:13 AM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was going to make a post of this but to avoid "BUT THERE ARE ALREADY SPIDERS": spider eye guide compiled via bugguide. (thanks cortex and griphus for getting this in my timeline~)
posted by curious nu at 9:21 AM on March 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


Would you rather fight 1 horse-sized duck or 29 million tons of spiders?

The answer seems pretty clear to me.
posted by Naberius at 9:24 AM on March 28, 2017 [8 favorites]


I'm favouriting this for the title alone. No links will be clicked, not by me, oh no!
posted by comealongpole at 9:27 AM on March 28, 2017


Spiders and all - cool... BUT. Why do people insist on comparing things to the Titanic? It's a completely meaningless metric that just means "This is probably quite big. Think of something widely considered to be REALLY big, with a big sounding name, and this is a MULTIPLE OF HUNDREDS OF THAT. OMG right? Big?"

Except the Titanic isn't actually that big compared to what anyone understands of a 'Big Boat'. No-one has even seen the thing - it hasn't existed for over a century in any useful visible form. Plus it really isn't that big compared to modern ships and doesn't seem all that impressive compared to a new cruise ship. There are 'normal' cruise ships that are bigger than the Titanic. The current largest one utterly dwarves it.
posted by Brockles at 9:30 AM on March 28, 2017 [7 favorites]


Ok but could humans also eat all the spiders?

OK, I only had the heebie-jeebies before, but that gave me the wiggins.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:33 AM on March 28, 2017 [7 favorites]


Ok but could humans also eat all the spiders?

Given that "the world's spider population weighs 29 million tons" from the article, along with the claim that "we eat 11.5 million pounds of food in just sixty seconds" from HuffPo, my calculator thinks it would take us about three and a half days. Though note that this model does not include the inevitable death of all Australians early in Day 1.
posted by solotoro at 9:36 AM on March 28, 2017 [9 favorites]


does 'getting the wiggums' mean that you ralph?
posted by beerperson at 9:46 AM on March 28, 2017 [5 favorites]


Except the Titanic isn't actually that big compared to what anyone understands of a 'Big Boat'.

This is a pretty good argument to have in a thread about spiders.
posted by bondcliff at 9:55 AM on March 28, 2017 [8 favorites]


> the article is illustrated with gifs of spider nests being poked
The first one is a nest of harvestmen, and those are not spiders.
</pendantic>
posted by farlukar at 10:06 AM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


This is a pretty good argument to have in a thread about spiders.

Well, it makes "478 Titanics of spiders in the world" seem significantly less scary, surely.
posted by Brockles at 10:22 AM on March 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


Depends on how well they can steer ships.
posted by rewil at 10:23 AM on March 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


I mean, it's only 263 Allure of the Seas. Seems like hardly any now.
posted by Brockles at 10:23 AM on March 28, 2017 [7 favorites]


sure I'd fight a spider-sized cruise ship
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:24 AM on March 28, 2017 [8 favorites]


Yes, but does Peter Parker do the eating, or is he among the eaten?
posted by stevis23 at 10:27 AM on March 28, 2017


The Spider-Man eats all the spiders that do not eat themselves.
posted by beerperson at 10:32 AM on March 28, 2017 [4 favorites]


I was on a train on a misty morning in West Virginia last year and, riding by a field, was stunned by the thousands of webs that the dew made visible. The field was easily the size of 3-4 city blocks, and there probably wasn't a square foot of it that didn't have at least 1-2 big ones in it. Then, I ran into one of them in the train bathroom. Spiders!
posted by ryanshepard at 10:38 AM on March 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


Look, everybody knows you only have to eat as many spiders as are in the Box of Gavrok. Then *you* eat the world.
posted by teleri025 at 10:40 AM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


the article is illustrated with gifs of spider nests being poked, if seeing those gives you the wiggins
Bugger.
posted by roystgnr at 10:41 AM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


Thank you for saying "gives you the wiggins". After recently rewatching S1-3 of BtVS, I really have been missing regular use of the phrase.

Also, I love spiders in the abstract, and fear them in reality. I hope they can try to forgive me for this inconsistency, but abstract/fictional spiders never walk on my pillow.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 10:47 AM on March 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


Sure, it's possible the spiders have read this paper. That doesn't mean they understood it.
posted by The Bellman at 10:54 AM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


I mean, it's only 263 Allure of the Seas. Seems like hardly any now.

Ah, but now see, cruise ships give me the howling fantods. so...
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:33 AM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


The word "titanic" means hugely big. The phrase "Allure of the Seas" means a marketing team worked on this for hours. Hours!

I love spiders and would not eat them.
posted by chavenet at 12:58 PM on March 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


The first one is a nest of harvestmen, and those are not spiders.

Fun facts about harvestmen: they (Opiliones) are an older lineage than true spiders (Araneae), with fossils that resemble modern harvestmen appearing in the Middle Devonian (ca 400 million years ago). They also have penises, unlike other arachnids! the oldest penis known in the fossil record is an Opiliones penis from the Rhynie Chert.

Also, one of them got into my car last summer and started crawling up my leg and I almost crashed.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 1:03 PM on March 28, 2017 [12 favorites]


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.

*picks up baseball bat, backs out of the room quietly*
posted by BlueHorse at 5:40 PM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Bellman: “Sure, it's possible the spiders have read this paper. That doesn't mean they understood it.”
I mean, we know they can write, even if it's usually "demands for the dismantling of western imperialism, a scathing critique of the bourgeoisie, and a request for less mosquito spraying."
posted by ob1quixote at 7:02 PM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


Not to mention glorifying pigs.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:14 PM on March 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


Giant ‘Spider Bum Parachutes’ Cover New Zealand Field
“We thought surely there are no spiders inside that,” Tracey Maris, who discovered the web with her daughter, told the Daily Times. “We walked further up, and our feet started getting stuck in the cobwebs and then we noticed little black things on top.

“So, as you do, we screamed really loudly,” Maris added. “Oh my God, they were everywhere; literally thousands of them.”
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:24 PM on April 17, 2017


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