Sydney funnel-web spider.
© Queensland Musem
 
* There are more individual spiders, and more spider species, than in any other group of predators. Their sheer biomass is staggering.
* They’re everywhere, from 20,000-foot Alpine peaks to pitch-black caves to deserts to marine tide pools. (A few species spend their entire lives underwater.)

They eat a lot.
* Spiders are the largest entirely carnivorous order of animals.
* Assuming an average consumption of 0.1 gram of prey per spider per day, the spiders in one hectare of forest would consume 47,500 kilograms of prey per year--which is equal to 47.5 metric tons of insects!

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