If spiders banded together, they could eat all humans in one year

An arachnophobe's worst nightmare. Photo / 123rf

It's not likely but, should spiders ever decide to join forces, they could technically decimate the entire human population within one year.

Research shows that if spiders, who thankfully, at least for now, only eat insects, needed to use humans as fuel, all human life would be gone in a year.

Some spiders are known to eat lizards, birds and even some small mammals so we're not saying "get ready for the great spider apocalypse" but we're also not saying don't get ready for the great spider apocalypse.

According to experts, the total volume of food the entire spider population consumes in a single year is more than the combined weight of every human on the planet.

Martin Nyffeler of the University of Basel in Switzerland and Klaus Birkhofer of Lund University in Sweden and the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg in Germany, found that spiders worldwide consume between 440.9 and 881.8 million tons of prey in any given year.

That total is at least equivalent to all seven billion humans on the planet who, according to the authors, consume about 400 million tonnes of meat and fish each year.

In fact, the total weight of humans is below what spiders consume, meaning that, should their diet change to target human meat, they could eat us all one by one, leaving no human behind ... and still be hungry.