Scientists discover spider species that feeds its young milk

Re:Scientists discover spider species that feeds its young milk by xyzzy123 on Saturday December 01, 2018 @05:53PM (#18579496)

I’m finding it hard to get past the squeam. A bit of fermi estimation puts spider requirements in the megaton range.

Suppose you wanted to replace just milk drunk by humans in the U.S. Say 100 megalitres per day (roughly).

Suppose a spider produces say 2% of bodymass as milk per day. Under that assumption we need on the order of 5 * 10^9 kg or 5 megatons of spiders.

The following article estimates the current spider population of the world at just 25 megatons.

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/03/the-amount-of-food-spider...

Now I’m slightly haunted by the idea of a megaton scale “spider farm”.

Also your comment is an excellent illustration of Poe’s law.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Scientists discover spider species that feeds its young milk by mchannon on Saturday December 01, 2018 @06:43PM (#18579771)

There are about 100 million cattle in the US today. Assuming 75% are fully grown and the remainder weightless, that comes in at 75 million tons of cattle.

I have no trouble visualizing 75 million tons of cattle, so why is it so challenging to visualize 5 million tons of milking spiders? Setting up distributed shipping containers to replace centralized dairies and feedlots seems quite easy to me.

No need to torture yourself on whether I'm being serious or not. I think it's a nice thought exercise and perhaps even a business model.

[ Parent | on HN ]