Orb-Weaving Spiders — Masters of Silk

If you are afraid of spi­ders, then the orb-web spi­ders will prob­a­bly fill you with wild hor­ror too. These amaz­ing spi­ders can grow up to 13 cen­time­ters, and their trap webs can reach up to 1 meter (enough to even catch a snake, bird or bat.

As you may have guessed, the name of the orb-weav­ing spi­ders was due to the spe­cial tech­nique of weav­ing the web. In sun­light, the web sparkles like gold and attracts bees, while in the shade it merges with the foliage and becomes almost invis­i­ble. This is not all the sub­tleties of this unique pyra­mid: silk threads con­tain a chem­i­cal com­pound called pyrro­li­dine alka­loid, which repels ants well. Smart, right?

All spi­ders can weave a strong web. Spi­der web has been proven to be 5 times stronger than steel and more resilient than nylon. What’s more, it is water­proof and can be stretched eas­i­ly. A very unusu­al nat­ur­al mate­r­i­al.

It is not sur­pris­ing that sci­en­tists are deter­mined to find a way to cre­ate arti­fi­cial silk. They are not the only ones fas­ci­nat­ed by this amaz­ing mate­r­i­al. Tex­tile design­ers Simon Peers and entre­pre­neur Nicholas God­ley trav­eled to the island of Mada­gas­car to try and make fab­ric out of orb-web silk.

The orb-web spi­der is often found in Aus­tralia, Asia, North and South Amer­i­ca and Africa, main­ly in warm cli­mates. The spi­der is not dan­ger­ous. Even if he bites you, you will not be seri­ous­ly hurt, since his poi­son is not fatal.

Con­tin­ue read­ing about the pea­cock spi­der and its amaz­ing dance.