Seventy people collected a million of these things off telephone poles in Madagascar. Then the spiders were hooked up to a silk extraction machine and forced to churn out golden silk, which was made into a big tablecloth. Turns out spider silk is stronger than steel or kevlar, so this is one awesome table cloth.Read more here.
6 comments:
Waaah! Your link is not working! I want to see the giant golden tablecloth.
Those spiders look damn cool. I hope the "silk extraction" machine isn't as painful as it sounds!
I fixed the link!
Holy crap. That's pretty unbelivable. My favorite bit was "Unfortunately, spider silk is extremely hard to mass produce: Unlike silk worms, which are easy to raise in captivity, spiders have a habit of chomping off each other’s heads when housed together."
I don't get this "stronger than steel or kevlar" bit exactly. Is that a proportional thing? I don't think I'd prefer a spider silk vest for stopping bullets, although I'd look stylish.
Them be some scary ass spiders.
I bet it's buttery soft too. Very cool.
That spider couldn't be under my shoe fast enough! Shudder.
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