Producing the spider silk—the only example of its kind displayed anywhere in the world—involved the efforts of 70 people who collected spiders daily from webs on telephone wires, using long poles. A unique piece of golden yellow silk brocade cloth, woven from spiderwebs, is on display at the Museum of Natural History in New York. To harvest enough silk to make the cloth, more than a million female golden orb spiders were collected in Madagascar, "milked" for silk, and released back into the wild. The golden spider silk was woven by Malagasy artisans into lamba Akotifahana, a type of brocade that is traditionally reserved for the aristocracy; the entire process took 4 years. [more inside]
posted by Quietgal on Oct 5, 2009 - 88 comments

North American Insects and Spiders - 7000+ close-ups of wolf spiders, black widows, honeybees, a ladybug eating an aphid, gulf fritillary butterflies, praying mantises, and much, much more
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jul 17, 2009 - 44 comments

"As part of Liverpool's Capital of Culture year, the French group La Machine were commissioned to create a large piece of street theatre, on the scale of their earlier work, the Sultan's Elephant. Many were expecting to see something using the iconic Liverbirds, the symbol of the city but instead we got a spider." We also got some amazing photographs from Peter Carr of the gorgeously monstrous 37-ton, 50-foot arachnid.
posted by storybored on Feb 7, 2009 - 30 comments

Story From North America. A boy learns to appreciate life in all its forms via song.
posted by ludwig_van on Jan 5, 2009 - 8 comments

At a cost of $20,000 a pound (google search prices vary). You have to wonder how much this cost. Poor Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper dropped her tool bag But don't worry, NASA tracks NEOs. And then there is the missing spider. Lastly, throwing in a gratuitous link to APOD (because it's cool and I can't wait to see the tool bag show up).
posted by cjorgensen on Nov 18, 2008 - 52 comments

Spider eating a snake [more inside]
posted by Baby_Balrog on Oct 19, 2008 - 77 comments

Ever wanted a pet spider but didn't want to bother with all the messy upkeep? Try a customizable tarantula in your browser! (flash) (NSF Arachnophobes)
posted by lekvar on Sep 12, 2008 - 35 comments

La Machine - the troop who brought The Sultan's Elephant to London (previously) - are at it again. This time, it's a gigantic, mechanical spider in Liverpool. YouTube. flickr.
posted by MrMustard on Sep 4, 2008 - 27 comments

Feel good hit of the year; Discovery Channel's 'I Love the Whole World' ad [more inside]
posted by oxford blue on Apr 19, 2008 - 103 comments

"... straight out of Down-Under, explosive stuntman-editor-producer-writer-actor-director Nash Edgerton delivers his latest effort, "Spider", a 9-minute action-thriller that gives an all-new meaning to old Peugeots, stunning blondes and love-jokes."
posted by bwg on Jun 8, 2007 - 35 comments

There is apparently such a thing as a chicken eating spider. Take heart that you're probably not a chicken.
posted by moonbird on May 6, 2007 - 102 comments

Web-Building Is For Suckas (YouTube, approx. 2 mins.)... A bit of an update on Peter Witt's famous 1960s experiments on the effects of various drugs on spiders' web-building abilities (previously featured on Metafilter here and here)
posted by amyms on Jan 3, 2007 - 59 comments

Japanese Spider-Man seen here before, but this time he seems to be protected by a bandito type sporting a machine-gun guitar (but sadly, not one of these).
posted by mattoxic on Dec 4, 2006 - 8 comments

Spider web construction gallery is a collection of diagrams of the path a spider takes when constructing it's web. The diagrams are colour coded by construction phase. [VIA MoFi's very first post.]
posted by Mitheral on Aug 15, 2006 - 24 comments

Shut yo' mouth! The US government, will soon spider the entire web analyzing all pages -- including your blog -- for evidence of "terrorism". It greatly extends prior government watching of the web for "terrorists" like the ACLU. But not for political speech, of course. Never that.
So shut your mouth and shut down your blog if you don't want to end up on a list of people to be "neutralized" -- like Mario Savio, hounded for ten years despite never breaking a law.
posted by orthogonality on Feb 9, 2006 - 111 comments

YUCK! A camel spider eats a lizard.
posted by obeygiant on Jan 24, 2006 - 43 comments

I found a digital camera in the woods
posted by bob sarabia on Aug 24, 2004 - 55 comments

Spiders weave huge natural wonder in B.C. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
posted by nemesis on Nov 28, 2002 - 17 comments

Don't click this link! A woman in Athens, Greece went to the doctor complaining of headaches. Upon examination, the doctor discovered a SPIDER LIVING IN HER EAR. Good night, folks, pleasant dreams. (via Fark)
posted by RylandDotNet on Jun 12, 2002 - 32 comments

this is your spider on drugs. got it? as a dedicated coke-a-holic (cola) what wigs me out is the caffeine example! (thanks to the fabulous toadie for the link.)
posted by centrs on Mar 18, 2002 - 27 comments

A good week for movie fans. Cronenberg has a new movie in production (Spider, with Gabriel Byrne as well as the cast listed). And TCM is running some interesting stuff on Thursday and Friday (Andrei Rublev has quite a reputation(s)). That's a complete (I think) retrospective of Tarkovsky Fridays throughout September, BTW.
posted by aflakete on Sep 2, 2001 - 9 comments