Interesting Facts

One million spiders were used to create a golden spider silk cape that will be on show at London's V&A. (The designers, Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley, used Madagascar Golden Orb spiders to create the work of art. It takes the silk from 23,000 spiders to weave 25 grammes of silk, and there are 1.5kg of silk in the cape. All in all, it took eight years to complete it. The spiders were "borrowed" from the forest, and returned there after a day. I wonder if they have a union?)

Spider silk is stronger than steel. (And it's very, very stretchy. The idea of stretchy building materials doesn't fill me with joy.)

Nerve cells can grow along bundles of a special fibre similar to spider silk, the comes from silk worms, which have been modified to give the fibres special properties that help cells to bind it acts as a scaffold on which nerve cells can grow. (There's hope for my nerves yet then.)