Spider silk

From the New York Times

As Nicholas Godley, a fashion designer living in Madagascar put it, "If we were doing all of this to make money, I could think of much, much easier ways to do it." The fabric illustrated above is 11 feet long, and it's made from the silk of golden orb spiders from Madagascar. Collecting the silk to weave the fabric was an enormous challenge. Godley and Simon Peers, a British art historian who also lives in Madagascar, hired local people to collect spiders (about 3000 a day) and set up a system where workers drew the silk from the spinnerets.

And what became of the spiders, without whose very personal contributions the textile would not have been possible? While some died in its production, Mr. Godley and Mr. Peers said they set up a system in which the spiders being used were released daily, and detailed spreadsheets were kept to chart the number of spiders used, their yield and the casualty rate.

"We have become sort of the defenders of these spiders, something we never thought we'd be," said Mr. Godley, who calls himself a committed arachnophobe, but added, "They really are very regal-looking creatures." (source)

Peers and Godley estimate that the piece of cloth pictured above cost about half a million dollars to produce. Clearly, it's not likely that making cloth from these spiders will build a big industry in Madagascar, but it is a reminder of the incredible beauty to be found in nature -- and the incredible strength. Its tensile strength is five to six times greater than that of steel by weight.