A Spider's Tale

It’s No Fairy Tale

Lots of old folk tales depict a spider weaving silk to make clothes, but this is real life. It’s not just one spider this time, but over one million Madagascan Golden Orb spiders. The V&A has this garment on display in its Golden Spider Silk exhibition from 25 January to 5 June 2012.

The Guardian also has more information on the cloth and its creators.

Spider-goat, spider-goat…

We’ve known for a long time now that spider silk is phenomenally strong. Stronger than anything we can make. Wouldn’t it be great to take that fibre and make lots of it. The trouble is, spiders are so antisocial, they’ll eat each other until each has enough space. So farming them would be impossible. But can we get more sociable animals to produce the spider silk proteins?

Adam Rutherford explores this and other astonishing bioengineering developments in the BBC Horizon programme Playing God