How Much Do Spiders Weight?
WouterA spider weighs roughly two and a half grains of silk. This is about four times as much as a single spider’s average yield. They also feed on flies and other insects.
A few species of spiders are extremely large. One species, called the goliath bird eater, can weigh as much as 175 grams. They are able to eat a lot of small animals, such as frogs and mice.
Another species, the jumping spider, has large outer lenses that enable it to see patterns better than elephants. Their central eyes are like tiny binoculars. They can also move their retinas up and down. The smaller inner lens projects an image onto the retina.
A team of researchers recently estimated how many of these spiders exist in the world. They found that there are at least 45,000 different species. They estimate that each of these spiders consumes about 400 million tons of biomass every year.
These numbers could lead to a world population of about 25 million metric tons of spiders. It would eat just as much meat as the combined human population of 7.4 billion people. The researchers used data from 65 existing studies to create the calculations.
Depending on the environment, there are a number of variations in spider weight. Some spiders are very light while others are large and bulky. The size of a spider also depends on its species. The common house spider weighs from 10 mg to 1 g. The tarantula is usually between 30 g and 100 g.
