Spider spinneret video

curt0909 · Post by **curt0909** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 8:05 pm

Unfortunately during the silk spinning process this spider moved in and out of frame and focus too much to capture decent video. But it does have some small spinneret movements. I will reattempt this subject again in the future. Hope you enjoy it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoY4ECAd1l4

Walter Piorkowski · Post by **Walter Piorkowski** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 9:53 pm

Interesting video Curt. Enjoyed it. I noticed you got a nice shot of an attachment thread. I want to work on that this year. Walt

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 11:06 pm

This is very nice work. I've spent enough time trying to photograph corralled spiders to appreciate what you've pulled off here.

--Rik

curt0909 · Post by **curt0909** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 11:34 pm

Thanks Walt and Rik. Walt, I guess I was lucky. It was the first time I tried to video a live spider and he was very active and spun silk a few times. I tried again a few weeks later with the same spider but he was not so active.

RogelioMoreno · Post by **RogelioMoreno** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 4:28 am

Vey nice video, the spider was alive!

Rogelio

curt0909 · Post by **curt0909** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 9:04 am

Thanks Rogelio. He was alive. I used 4 strips of cardboard to form the walls of the enclosure. It took many attempts to get the spider to stay in the 1 inch square area long enough to place the coverslip. Vaseline was used as the adhesive to hold the cardboard to slide and coverslip.

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 10:24 am

Very nice technical video Curt.

Spider silk has been used for rifle scopes for a long time. During WWII, it was in demand for bomb sites. You might find more information searching for how they did that. I once saw a picture of a spider silk reeler that held the spider in a jig and had a little crank thing that wound it up like a fishing reel. Here is some information on the problems they solved in doing that.

http://www.amerisurv.com/content/view/4216/136/

"A reel designed by Warner & Swasey resulted in producing the silk in a cleaner and neater manner. Thereafter Albright made his reels in the same design, on each of which 50 feet or more of silk was wound. The silk that emerged from the spider’s pouch was wound on reels, about 100 feet to a reel, and was sold at $9 a reel through the Central Scientific Company of Chicago. In September 1940, Hollywood scientific film makers came to Albright’s farm and produced several educational films of his operation."

Here is a page with an audio clip from a violin with spider silk strings.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17232058

And here is a PDF that shows some of the contraptions invented to reel in the silk.

http://www.amerisurv.com/PDF/TheAmerica ... ay2005.pdf

curt0909 · Post by **curt0909** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 1:21 pm

Thanks Mitch. Interesting info as well. Spider silk is a very promising material. A year or 2 ago scientists created a goat/spider hybrid that would produce large amounts of spider silk protein in the milk. They extracted the protein and pumped it through artificial spinnerets but the silk created this way was only 10% as strong compared to silk created by the spider whose genes were crossed with the goat.

If your interested in spider silk I recommend this short presentation that was featured on microscopy-uk.com a couple months ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xossR6eHv3I