They’re in your yard,
on your walls,
in your attic,
and there’s probably one near you right now.
The thought of these creepy crawlers might
make you want to go on an immediate
spider crusade.
With global numbers in the quadrillions,
there would be 2.8 million spiders
versus every human.
My money is on the spiders.
Maybe with a large-scale international effort,
spiders could be eradicated.
Just imagine a spider free world.
Spiders are prolific.
There are 45,000 species of spiders that we currently know of,
and scientists estimate that there are twice
that amount we haven't discovered yet.
They range massively in size too.
The Samoan moss spider is a mere 11/1000th millimeter (.011 inches) long,
while the South American Goliath birdeater
is 30 cm (12").
From a nearly invisible one-third of a pinhead
to the diameter of your dinner plate.
Each species of spider contains
an average of 500 unique toxins,
which allow them to paralyze,
kill, and liquify their prey.
Well only 12 types of spiders can actually harm humans.
Unlike other biting insects,
they only bite when they feel threatened,
and they don’t transmit diseases
like mosquitoes, bedbugs, and ticks.
Jerks.
Some spiders helpfully chow down
on these bloodsucking pests,
so you should be thanking them.
If we killed all spiders,
we would see a huge population surge
in these nasty bugs and the diseases they spread,
like malaria, Zika, and dengue fever.
While birds and bats also eat insects,
spiders are the true insect control extraordinaires.
Without them, creepy crawlers would flourish.
Which would be bad news for our food system.
Cereal crops like oats, wheat,
corn, rye, and potatoes
would be the first to succumb to the horde
of uncontrolled insects.
We would have to ramp up pesticide use quickly,
which poses its own threat to humans and the environment.
Faced with a declining food supply
and an abundance of insects,
you might have to make a diet change.
There are 1,900 edible bugs on Earth,
and if we don’t want to perish to worldwide famine,
we would have to bring bugs into the mainstream diet.
And it’s not just our food source
that would be devastated
if we did away with all spiders.
Venom and spider silk are being researched
for innovative medicines and material.
At the University of Buffalo,
researchers are testing the venom of a
South American spider to treat muscular dystrophy.
And venom from the Blue Mountains funnel-web spider
is being used to help combat malaria.
Spider silk is incredibly lightweight and strong.
As in, 10 times stronger than Kevlar, strong.
This natural silk could be used in
bulletproof vests in the future,
if we don’t wipe out our spider supplier first.
The same spidey-strong material
could revolutionize industries as an
eco-friendly alternative to many highly processed materials.
It's even being developed
for use as artificial ligaments,
tendons, and surgical thread.
All of this innovation would stop
if we slayed the spiders.
More pressing though,
the world as we know it could cease to exist.
While some reports state that in the
absence of spiders humankind would die out
in less than five years
due to food scarcity.
Other researchers are more skeptical.
Scientists from the University of Basel
claim spiders hunt more in deep,
dark forests and undisturbed grasslands,
and not so much in agricultural fields.
Additional scientists believe
nature would simply adapt to fill the void,
with population booms in animals like bats,
birds, and lizards.
Even if the world didn’t end
after we killed all spiders,
they still play a huge and important role
in our environment and health.
So maybe you should be a little kinder
to the next spider you see.
Maybe name it Charlotte
and spin a web of friendship with it instead.
After all, it’s probably
silently guarding your house from more troublesome pests,
like mosquitoes.
I, for one, would much rather see a world
without mosquitoes
than a world without spiders,
but that’s a story for another WHAT IF.