See How Silk Is Milked From a Spider - mercierwhitu1954

Silk is a pretty special material that we utilise to make all sorts of things–from the world's softest pillows to bulletproofing skin. But you wealthy person to ask, how do we actually get onto?

If you thought spiders were creepy by themselves, Reddit user Paul_Lazzaro's job is to milk the webbing out of live black widow spiders. Helium does this by knock them out with carbonic acid gas, pinning them up to a dissection-table-esque Petri dish rig, and victimisation a auto pull all strand of silk out.

Of course, this is not to torture the hapless (and extremely poisonous) bitty thing; this is all in the name of scientific discipline. Paul_Lazzaro is a graduate student currently studying biology who workings with the "silk-associated molecules in the silk and their use in communication", as well equally with spider ballock sacs too.

While these spiders assume't "look-alike" the process, they survive and continue to approach their "spidery" concern afterwards. The individual spiders can also personify "milked" several times though their lifetime. [Update: Milking, of course, isn't the technical term for this: it's "mechanical silking". You learn something new-sprung every day.]

Hopefully scientists will get word the chemical makeup of spider silk that allows IT to be so flexible, strong, and elastic entirely at the same time. Then maybe we can start artificially manufacturing information technology shortly.

Updated Feb 4, 2022 to correct attribution. Also, as to begin with posted, this story explicit that Reddit user Paul_Lazzaro is a grad student currently studying entomology. This is non the case: The research worker has a Bachelor's in entomology, and is currently studying biology. Our apologies for the mix-up; we regret these errors.

[Reddit via Gizmodo]

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