Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV
No, it's not an example of spider bondage. The orb spider in this video is pinned down to harvest its silk.
Fritz Vollrath and his team at the University of Oxford developed the technique to extract samples for research purposes. In this video, as the spider spins a thread, it's drawn out and wound on a motorised reel. The process can continue for up to 8 hours, producing about 2 centimetres per second if the spider is left to spin at its natural rate. It's notoriously time-consuming to collect large amounts of silk: the only textiles known to be made of the material are a one-off golden cape and a 4-metre-square rug. The latter product took 80 people five years to make.
Vollrath and his colleagues used the process to examine how different conditions affect the silk produced. They found that temperature and spinning speed contributed to the quality of the fibres. For example, in hotter conditions, a spider spins its silk faster, but as a result the silk produced isn't as strong. The researchers speculate that when silk is expelled more quickly, there isn't as much time for the silk molecules to align in the spider's duct, increasing the shear and stretching forces.
Spider silk holds promise for a range of technologies due to its impressive properties: it's 20 times as strong as steel, extremely flexible and stretchy. Since it doesn't elicit an immune reaction in the human body, it's ideal for many medical applications, from artificial heart muscle to brain implants. But harvesting spider silk on a large scale is still a major challenge. Silkworms could prove a more promising source because their cocoons can be collected more easily.
If you enjoyed this post, watch spider silk stop a speeding bullet or listen to what a violin with spider silk strings sounds like.
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