Spider silk amazing facts.


You may not be a fan of spiders, but you have to admire their ability to create silk and use it in multiple ways.  The common conception is that spiders only use it to make a web for capturing prey.  However, its strength, flexibility, and ease of production (for the spider) make it an extremely versatile tool.  Below is a list of some spiders and their use of this amazing material.

  • trap door spiders create burrows up to a foot deep and line the burrow with silk; they create a lid over their burrow and hinge it with silk.  
  • funnel web spiders create trip lines that radiate out from their hiding place to alert the owner of nearby prey.
  • jumping spiders create a dragline when they jump down from a surface when escaping danger.
  • spiders wrap eggs in silk to encase and protect the embryos.  Wolf spider females bring the egg case with them wherever they go.
  • baby spiders often disperse by throwing a silken thread (gossamer) into the air and ballooning away with the wind
Spider silk itself is an amazing material.  A web is created for catching prey.  Lines radiating out from the center are not sticky (touch one!) while the lines running in concentric circles are sticky.  That is just two of the seven different types of silk spiders can produce.  Some produce all seven, but most are capable of producing only 4 or 5 varieties.  Each type of silk has a different function.  To see a good graphic on the subject, click here.  

Spider silk is basically a protein made of long strings of the amino acids alanine and glycine.  For its mass, spider silk is roughly five times stronger than steel and two times stronger than kevlar.  The silk is also very flexible and can stretch about 30% longer than (some sources say multiple times) its resting length without breaking.  

Scientists are looking at creating synthetic spider webs.  There are numerous methods for this and the number of potential applications is amazing.  There are quite a few interesting articles on the subject.  To see one, click here.

Thanks for reading.   www.ericspix.com

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