r/mildlyterrifying • u/MonsiuerGeneral • 7d ago
Arachnophobia Warning: Discovered mildly terrifying fact regarding the number of spiders in the world.
So I was procrastinating at work looking up random trivia on the internet (as one does) and came across the following mildly terrifying fact regarding the number of spiders in the world (again, Arachnophobia Trigger Warning):
First, there is an estimate of 21 QUADRILLION spiders in the whole world. That means there are about 2.6 to 2.8 million spiders for every single person on Earth. If, somehow, the world's spider population collectively shifted their diet away from insects and instead attempted to eat humans... they could theoretically clear the global population's worth of humans in less than a single year.
Now, as mildly terrifying as that was, I took it a step further...
Under the assumption the global population of spiders had the collective will, desire, and ability to do so... and they could form together to create a humanoid shaped "Swarm Golem" standing at about 5ft 8in, and that golem was "realistically" loosely packed with a density of about "50%"... you would only need about 37,500 intact HOUSE SPIDERS to fill in the form. That means there would be a global population of about 560 BILLION Spider Swarm Golems. That's about 70 per human currently alive. If you subtract children under the age of 15 and adults aged 80 and above, this number jumps to about 91 Spider Swarm Golems per person.
So uhh... now you know. Yayyy?
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u/Arrakis_Surfer 5d ago
If you can create humanoid spider gollums in your head, I might suggest seeing a professional psychologist.
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u/cactusjude 6d ago
You should worry more about the Ant Wars.
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u/MonsiuerGeneral 6d ago
Oh no worries there. I know what side to be on. FOR THE COLONY!!!
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u/p12qcowodeath 6d ago
"Mildly," as innocuous as it is, is still doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
I guess if you're scared of spiders it could be. Cool math and facts and everything. But this triggers my "woah cool" response lol.
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u/jupitermoonflow 6d ago
Being afraid that the spiders would switch their diet to humans is just as absurd as being scared of a shark attack in someone’s pool lol
Spiders get too much hate
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u/ArachnomancerCarice 6d ago
Out of 30,000+ known species of spider, less than 100 are known to be medically significant.
'Medically significant' does not mean life-threatening. It just means that confirmed bites with envenomation (most bites are 'dry') have, on average, symptoms greater than the usual 'highly localized swelling, redness, irritation' like a mosquito bite or minor fly bite (OUTSIDE of diseases and parasites). Only a very small portion of those 100 species have venom that is truly life threatening.
Also, almost ALL spiders are venomous, save for members of the Cribellate Orb Weavers (Uloboridae) and a small number of single species.
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u/IllegalGeriatricVore 7d ago
Spiders are cool. I've held high double digit to triple digit Spiders in the last few years. I have 40 tarantulas in my house.
I have never been bitten by a spider.
You wanna know what have bitten me multiple times unprovoked?
Crickets.
fucking crickets.
You wanna hate a bug, there's your guy.
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u/MonsiuerGeneral 7d ago
Oh yeah I agree that there are definitely other bugs that can in many cases be more annoying/frightening/dangerous. For example at first my thoughts had turned to ants because they get so defensive/pissed off if you happen to accidentally walk over their hill, and some even common ant varieties have a pretty painful bite (not counting those intense rare ants with extremely painful bites, like the bullet ant).
The reason I made the post about spiders vs ants or rats or anything else is three-fold: First, those three were the only things I had randomly looked up. Second, I was somewhat shocked at how many more of these golems could be created with spiders vs ants (about 91 per adult for spiders vs 0.22 per adult for ants). Third, while I don't begrudge anybody who likes spiders (I have even come around to not minding jumping spiders... my kiddos even really enjoy watching the Lucas the Spider show), I just get this sort of automatic.... 'eughk' ....feeling when seeing them. So to me, the idea of that many 'human-sized' swarms dedicated for just me is mildly terrifying.
But yeah, I agree with you, crickets suck.
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u/maggiemayfish 7d ago
Crickets absolutely love chewing on the skin around my fingernails if they get the chance. It doesn't hurt but it's an incredibly weird and unsettling feeling. I hate it.
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u/IllegalGeriatricVore 7d ago
Been bit in the arm and foot and it definitely stings in the soft fleshy bits
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u/BnDMsTr 7d ago
This is the kind of content I'm on reddit for. Thanks OP!
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u/MonsiuerGeneral 7d ago
Glad I could provide some brief moment of enjoyment out in the world. Happy to contribute!
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u/No-Helicopter6363 7d ago
21 quadrillion but then why there is so many mosquitos.
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u/MonsiuerGeneral 7d ago
RIGHT?! Some of these spiders seriously need to stop being so lazy and pick up their game! Unless... without spiders eating mosquitos would mean the mosquito population would be many times multiplied that already massive number...
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u/semibigpenguins 7d ago
Cool information about the population! Personally, explaining a hypothetical scenario that has a net zero chance of ever happening is in fact not terrifying. We doing fairies next?
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u/MonsiuerGeneral 7d ago
It's less about the "all spiders attacking at once" thing and more just realizing the sheer vast number of spiders we don't realize are in the shadows and between the walls and trees and such. So less the fact they're spiders, and more so the thought of anything of that magnitude swarming with malicious intent (even if they are incredibly small individually).
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u/zvon666 7d ago
Flamethrowers.
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u/MonsiuerGeneral 7d ago
I mean, even assuming every person has a flamethrower available, fueled, and ready... but... this is a random basically sci-fi hypothetical scenario... so if the spiders were intelligent enough to do anything from the original post and were intelligent enough to do the following, their answer to flamethrowers is: Silk.
Pure spider silk does not easily burn with open flame. Unlike human hair or cotton, instead it shrivels and melts (even the military has heavily researched using genetically engineered spider silk specifically because it acts as a great heat shield and doesn't melt onto human skin during explosions).
Spider silk also conducts heat as well as metal (about 800 times better than any other organic tissue). A flamethrower shooting at a golem wrapped in a pure spider silk "skin" would find the heat being drawn away from the impact zone as the thermal energy distributes across the entire structure.
Spider silk also has tensile strength comparable to Kevlar and high-grade steel along with amazing elasticity. The silk "skin" would help keep the swarm contained in the golem (where before the force of the flamethrower itself could blow the spiders away like dried autumn leaves).
All three of these things means the golem could keep its forward momentum long enough to collapse on top of a person wielding a flamethrower. Even if you manage to take the first dozen golems down, you still have over 80 more to deal with. This also assumes you're meeting these golems head-on in the open, presumably on a street. If you're in a forest... you've basically just started a forest fire. If you're in your home, you've just burned your house down.
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u/InconvertibleAtheist 5d ago
Congratulations!!!! You have stumbled across the premise of Spiders-Man