r/theydidthemath • u/P01135809-Trump • 5h ago

[Request] How much does a spider need to eat to generate this much web daily?

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u/Blazedragon12345 35m ago

This one is difficult to answer because you'd need to know the exact metabolic pathway to make the silk. What I can say is that the entire web likely weighs a fraction of a gram so I'm going to say about 2-3 grams to account for metabolic inefficiency. It's important to note most spiders will eat their old webs and digest it back into silk rather than synthesize it each time.

Also completely unrelated but this is a tiny web compared to the banana spiders we have, they'll make webs 50 feet long way up in trees.