An ancient ancestor of spiders and relatives doubled its genome about 400 million years ago, setting the stage for the ...

A spider web is much more than meets the eye. These intricate structures, created entirely from silk, allow spiders to capture prey, build shelter and even communicate. Spider webs are shockingly ...

High above the rivers of Madagascar, a small arachnid is quietly rewriting what I thought was possible in nature. The ...

Spiders have silk-producing glands in their bodies, specifically in their abdomen. In these glands, they have the chemical components already put together to produce silk, but it’s in a liquid form.

What makes spider silk so extraordinarily strong and elastic at the same time? This was the focus of recent investigations ...

Take a walk through a forest, and you’re bound to come upon a spider web stretching from one tree branch to the next. The intricacy of the web can leave a person in awe, but what is even more ...

Spider webs are made from a protein fiber which we call silk. It is both strong and stretchy but not all spider silk is the same, there are several different types. Spiders produce silk using special ...

Understanding how the stretching process strengthens spider silk is a key part of helping design stronger, biodegradable, silk-inspired materials for various applications. When spiders spin their webs ...

In these glands, they have the chemical components already put together to produce silk, but it’s in a liquid form. When spiders want to produce a strand of solid silk, they have to pull this strand ...