Part of the 11-foot-long cloth woven from spider silk

Part of the 11-foot-long cloth woven from spider silk. Photo from AMNH.org

One of my favorite places is the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. If you’ve seen the movie “Night at the Museum” you might think you know something about the museum – but reality can be even weirder than the movies. Right now at the museum, for example, you can see an eleven foot long golden piece of cloth, made completely from (TA DA!) spider silk. Even the gorgeous golden color of the thread was supplied by the female spiders, since they are  a species from Madagascar known as the golden orb spider. The collection of the spider silk  and the weaving of the cloth was done by teams of humans. To find out more about it, check this out: One Million Spiders.

One more thing to think about – how did spiders get named Arachnids? Look for the story of Arachne in Greek mythology to find out.