DailyDirt: Spiders, Man!

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Mar 20th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Spiders are just fascinating creatures -- not only because they have a crazy number of appendages, but also because they create intricate webs and seem to have incredibly complex behaviors for such small animals. To top it off, we're learning something new about the properties of spider silk all the time. Here are just a few examples.

Japanese researchers have used spider silk as violin strings. This is what it sounds like when ~~doves~~ flies cry.... [url]
Surprisingly, certain spider silk is an excellent conductor of heat -- better than silicon, aluminum or iron -- and becomes more conductive as it stretches. Silk threads from "golden silk orbweavers" could teach us more about thermal conductivity and have applications in heat sinks or textile fiber technology. [url]
It took a million spiders to produce enough silk to make an 11'x4' rug. It also took 70 people four years to collect all that silk. [url]
To discover more interesting biological curiosities, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Filed Under: biology, heat conductor, materials, silk, spider silk, spider silk rug, spiders, violins

5 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 20 Mar 2012 @ 8:29pm

Waiting for the spider weave heatsinks for electronics that you don't need to throw out but just put on the washing machine, no more silver goo to mess around when cleaning the microprocessor fan yay!
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Mar 2012 @ 11:16pm

Re:
The Canadians have apparently been exploring various ways of getting spiders to produce the right type of material. Looks as though they've got a way to go, eh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc
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Michael Ho (profile), 21 Mar 2012 @ 12:30am

Re: Re:
The good old "spiders on drugs" video.... haven't seen that in a while, Anonymous Coward.
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Moacyr Pimenta, 21 Mar 2012 @ 7:16am

Spider Scary
They are such a scary animals.....
and dangerous too.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Mar 2012 @ 9:53am

Re: Re: Re:
Well shucks. Couldn't let yet another Daily Dirt/Spiders posting pass by without supplying a link to my personal all-time favorite video. Still "cracks" me up. For those late to the party, eh...
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