Spiders make golden silk for rare cloth
Sep 24th, 2009
From Wired: 1 Million Spiders Make Golden Silk for Rare Cloth.
A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders goes on display today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
To produce this unique golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting golden orb spiders from telephone poles in Madagascar, while another dozen workers carefully extracted about 80 feet of silk filament from each of the arachnids. The resulting 11-foot by 4-foot textile is the only large piece of cloth made from natural spider silk existing in the world today. [continue, see photos]
Spiders make the strongest and most intricate type of fibers that have ever been studied. The three dimensional structure of these fibrillar proteins is just extraordinary.
The amount of work and dedication behind this achievement is unbelievable.
Thank you for sharing.
J