Golden Cloth made from Spider Silk

[telophase]

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/spider-silk/

Note for arachnophobes: there's a photo of two large spiders being held by someone. :)

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.

Comments

[ilyena_sylph]

*yelps!*

that's awesome, but eeek! (yes, you warned, yes, I clicked anyway).

[telophase]

XD

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

All I can think of is "that's a lot of spiders!" and "OMG! Look at the size of their legs! Aieee!" Long-legged scuttlers are some how worse than the big bodied stumpy legged ones, I'm just glad they're in a picture and not hovering in a corner of the bathroom somewhere. ;)

Also the cloth is very pretty, but a part of me can't help but go "meh, it's just like every other piece of cloth I've ever seen..." Talk about being rooted in the mundane (I expect if we ever have a city on the moon I'll be going "meh, it's just like every other city I've ever seen...") XD

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I want to touch it to see what it feels like, but I suspect the museum wouldn't want me to. :)

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's the fabric strength that's most impressive.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

:O
That's AMAZING!

[marith.livejournal.com]

So bizarre and cool! Thanks!

[aquatic-party.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, this is really, really cool. *flails* I think I'm most impressed by the natural golden color of the silk--it's gorgeous! The spiders are pretty cute too, though I'd probably be terrified to encounter upon one up close. Spiders can be pretty frightening even at a small size, hee hee XD