Thread: Golden Orb Spider

Peter you may have to collect the web for Sue

Golden silk



A cape made from Madagascar Golden Orb spider silk exhibited at London's Victoria and Albert Museum in June 2012.^[13]



In the past there has been several efforts to produce garments from Nephila silk although none commercially viable.^[14] The last produced garment were two bed hangings that were shown at the 1900 Paris Exhibition.^[15] In 2004 a textile designer, Simon Peers, and an entrepreneur, Nicholas Godley managed in three years work and using 1.2 million Golden silk orb-weavers (collected in the wild and released some 30 minutes later after they produced the silk) to produce a shawl that was as exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History in 2009.^[16][17] By 2012 they managed to produce a second, bigger garment, a cape, that, together with the shawl, were exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.^[18]
Another possible use of Nephila silk lies in tissue engineering. A study from the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover reports that processed Nephila silk is an excellent scaffold material thanks to its biocompatibility, mechanical strengths, and its property to promote cell adhesion and proliferation.^[19] In particular, the silk acts as a suitable guiding material for peripheral nerve regrowth.^[20]
Fishermen on coasts of the indopacific ocean remove Nephila webs and form them into a ball, which is thrown into the water. There it unfolds and is used to catch bait fish.^[14]

I just wish they, and their cousins, would stop weaving their webs across my front path - I'm sure it is just as traumatic for the spider when I walk into their web as it is for me trying to wipe them off my face - ptooey. But they keep on coming back.

Great set of photos Crowie!

Good post Ray!