Learning From Spiders

DO YOU recoil at the sight of a spider? Even those of us who do have probably marveled, in spite of ourselves, at the elegant symmetry of a spider’s web. Most of us have heard, too, that the web is an engineering marvel. But what about the stuff of which the web is made​—the silk?

Scientists and engineers have long been intrigued by the silks produced by some spiders, silkworms, and flies. Christopher Viney, an assistant professor of bioengineering and a metallurgist at the University of Washington, U.S.A., has made a special study of the orb-​weaving spider. According to the Toronto, Canada, newspaper The Globe and Mail, he has found that one of the five types of silk that the spider produces is stronger than steel​—in fact, ten times tougher than Kevlar, the artificial fiber used in bulletproof clothing, boat hulls, and armored vehicles!

U.S. Army scientists have managed to duplicate the chemistry of fibroin, the protein of which this silk is made. The scientists found, though, that it is not just the silk’s chemical makeup that accounts for its remarkable properties; it is also the way the spider spins this chemical. In the spider’s spinneret, the silk assumes a liquid crystal state. Its molecules line up in long chains called polymers, which have great tensile strength. Still, Viney feels confident that with special fiber-​processing equipment, scientists will eventually learn to imitate this feat as well.

“Spiders still have the drop on us,” Viney told The Globe and Mail, but he added, “Who knows? Maybe we can improve upon them.” Maybe; maybe not. In any case, the credit for the original design will always go to only one Source​—the One who created all things, Jehovah.​—Revelation 4:11.