There are two kinds of people on the internet: those who have heard of Spiders Georg, and those who have not. If you are in the latter category, you can go ahead and close this article right now. It contains nothing of value for you.
Are they gone? Fantastic. Guys, gals, and non-binary pals, I present to you… the greatest paper ever written.
“On 9th January 2013, Tumblr user reallyreallyreallytrying, also known as Max Lavergne, made a post on the blogging site joking that the factoid [that people swallow eight spiders in their sleep per year] was influenced by one person, Spiders Georg, who lives in a cave and eats nothing but spiders, and that he is an outlier adn should not be counted,” reads the introduction to a 2024 paper by Kai Jac Cordes, an undergraduate student in the University of Leicester’s department of Life and Physical Sciences.
“This paper will be looking into the number of spiders that he would have to eat in order for this to be true,” Cordes declares, “and the possible health implications of this.”
That’s right, friends: somebody did the math. So, what’s the result?
Well, first, some particulars: the Spiders Georg meme states three, not eight spiders per year, Cordes points out, so that’s the figure they work with; it also states that Spiders Georg “lives in a cave”, so “ideally we would be focusing on cave spiders for any measurements and calculations,” they write.
Unfortunately, “there is surprisingly little nutritional information available for spiders,” they write, with “every source link[ing] back to the Bay Area Bug Eating Society’s values for ‘Very Large Spiders’.” That means that some math has to be used; Cordes works out the rough nutritional values for a suitable Spiders Georg-approved spider based on the Bug Eaters’ info and scaling down for size.
It’s not a lot per arachnid: Cordes comes away with values of 0.18 kcal, 0.02 grams (0.0007 ounces) of fat, and 0.126 grams (0.004 ounces) of protein in one spider. But Spiders Georg, famously, does not eat one spider – he eats enough to skew the whole world’s statistics. And according to Cordes’s math, that means somewhere around 24,000,000,000 – that’s 24 billion, with a b – spiders. Per day.
“This means he would have consumed 1.073×107kcals, 1,192 kg [2,628 pounds] of fat and 7,512 kg [16,561 pounds] of protein” each day in 2013, Cordes writes. “With this perspective it is abundantly clear that Spiders Georg would not be capable of this […] That amount would simply not fit in a person’s stomach or be capable of being processed.”
If somebody tried, “they would likely have extreme vomiting, diarrhea or both in the body’s attempt to remove it,” Cordes points out. “With the strain this would put a person’s body under, it would be likely that they would die fairly quickly.”
Now, should Spiders Georg follow the meme to the letter, and restrict himself to just 10,000 spiders per day, things would be a bit better for him: “that would only be 1,800 kcals, 200 g [7 ounces] of fat and 1,260 g [44 ounces] of protein,” Cordes notes, “which is a (comparably) more reasonable diet.”
Unfortunately, at this point, poor Georg would run into a different problem: kidney stones, heart disease, and stroke. The calorific content of 10,000 spiders a day wouldn’t be too awful – especially since Spiders Georg is noted to be “fairly sedentary”, Cordes points out – but he’d be consuming nearly three times the maximum recommended daily limit on fat, and eight times the recommended daily limit on protein.
“This would be putting a lot of strain on to his body,” Cordes writes, “so these factors, as well as a lack of other nutrients from his diet and lack of sunlight due to primarily living in a cave, would have him suffering severe physical effects and likely dying in a relatively short amount of time anyway.”
In short: if Spiders Georg were really alive… well, he wouldn’t be for long. But, Cordes concludes, he might “at least survive long enough to reduce the world’s spider population by a large amount.”
The paper is published in the University of Leicester’s Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics. (Do read it; it’s delightful.)
Source Link: How Many Spiders Could A Spiders Georg Gorge If A Spiders Georg Could Gorge Spiders?