Spiders have been known to carry some of the world’s deadliest venoms, eat their mates, produce silk strong than steel, and even grow the size of a small puppy.

As if all that isn’t terrifying enough, new research suggests the global spider population could theoretically devour every human on earth in a single year.

Not that they would necessarily, given that most species prefer to munch on insects. Some larger species have been known to snack on lizards, birds and even small mammals.

Still, the findings of professors Martin Nyffeler and Klaus Birkhofer, published in the research journal The Science of Nature earlier this month, are enough to give even the mildest arachnophobe a panic attack.

Let’s start with the fact that you are probably next to several spiders as you read this.

The study highlighted previous research suggesting, on average, there are 131 spiders per square meter on the globe. Under the right conditions, that tally can rise up to 1,000.

To give you an idea of just how many spiders are currently scurrying around the globe, Nyffeler and Birkhofer estimated the entire global population’s collective weight at 26 million metric tonnes -- about 223 times the weight of the CN Tower.

Moving on to their diet, the more than 45,000 species all have one thing in common -- an appetite for meat.

Nyffeler and Birkhofer found that flesh buffet amounts to somewhere between 360 million and 725 million metric tonnes of prey in any given year. To compare, the world’s seven billion humans consume about 360 million metric tonnes of meat and fish over that same period of time.

To up the creepiness factor, consider the global population of adult humans weighs in at an estimated 260 million tonnes, according to separate research first highlighted by The Washington Post. That means spiders could theoretically eat every single human, including children, and still have room for dessert.

To put that appetite into perspective, consider that spiders are known to eat up to 10 per cent of their body weight per day. If a 200-pound human were to match that intake, they would be eating nine kilograms of meat per day.

Nyffeler and Birkhofer had to look much further up the food chain to find an animal that is even somewhat on par with spiders’ voracious appetites.

“Our estimates for spiders appear to be of the same order of magnitude as the prey kill by whales in the world’s oceans which has been estimated to be in the range of 250–450 million metric tons annually,” they wrote in their report.