Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley teamed up to create materials from the silk produced from Golden Orb Spiders in Madagascar. They collected 1.2 million of these spiders and extracted their silk over the course of three years to create two golden silk capes.
This shawl is the world’s largest piece of spider-silk cloth ever created, which is now on display at the V&A Museum in London. No spiders were harmed in the making of the materials, and once the spider’s silk had been extracted, the spider was released back into the wild where they replenished their silk supplies in about a week. Each spider extracts ~30-50 m of thread each time the silk is extracted.
via Gizmodo
12 thoughts on “Shawls Made from the Silk of Over One Million Spiders”
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That sounds like a lot of work! I wonder if this will make spider silk textiles more common: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120106113037.htm
“No spiders were harmed in the making of the materials”
Who gives a s**t?
I do. Spiders are amazing creatures. How about a little respect for the planet?
+1, Jamie. Spiders are a little creepy but incredibly amazing ;)
Some are amazingly delicious(sic!) too – so even more respect upon them ;)
ps. are those shawl bulletproof? ;)
Haha, give me a cent for every time I’ve heard that “ps.” question :)
They say that spider silk is as strong as steel wire of the same thickness. I guess spiderman could use a costume made of it! (if it wasn’t shrinking so much when in contact with water…). Mayby when they make it thicker and add some hydrophobic coating they could make a bulletproof suit :)
Thank you bluemollusc for this article!