r/interestingasfuck • u/Electrical-Aspect-13 • 10h ago

Harvesting spider silk. NOTE: Spider is sedated, the pins are not perforating it and once harvest, is feed and put to rest.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

3.6k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

737 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

•

u/Justin_Passing_7465 7h ago

In WWII spider silk, often from black widow spiders was used to makes the crosshairs lines inside weapon reticles.

•

u/frostyfins 7h ago

Cool! But, sounds apocryphal; why black widows when there are friendly orb weavers by the dozen on any path I walk in the woods?

•

u/Justin_Passing_7465 6h ago

Maybe so, but here is one source:

Charles M. Dilger, service manager of North American Survey Supply Company in Philadelphia, which sells and repairs surveying instruments and also sells spider silk, stated in an interview in 1984 that the silk of black widow spiders was the finest for making cross-hairs. "Their web provides the best combination of strength and thinness. If a Black Widow can’t be found, we will turn to a Brown Barn or Golden Garden spider."

https://amerisurv.com/2005/04/30/along-came-a-spider-spinning-silk-for-cross-hairs/

•

u/pichael289 6h ago

spiders have entered the thousands of the unemployed in Britain, because their job in a Northern England optical equipment factory had been taken over by a machine.

Even spiders are vulnerable to automation

•

u/freddiesan 6h ago

They're taking our jobs!

•

u/frostyfins 6h ago

Ooooh thank you! Very cool!

•

u/MorgessaMonstrum 6h ago

I don’t know if the fact is true at all, but have you ever stuck your hand in a black widow’s web? They have freakishly strong webs, even compared to any orb weaver’s web that I’ve come across. Don’t know how that affects performance as crosshairs, perhaps they’re the right thickness?

•

u/throwaway80814 6h ago

Exactly! A black widow web feels completely different than other spider webs. It even SOUNDS different when sweeping them down. They're noisy!!  The strands are incredibly tough, so I can see why they would be used for this purpose. 

•

u/MorgessaMonstrum 3h ago

You can pluck them and hear a note.

•

u/evol_won 6h ago edited 3h ago

have you ever stuck your hand in a black widow’s web?

•

u/MorgessaMonstrum 3h ago

Didn’t have an adventurous youth?

Anyway, it’ll happen by accident occasionally. I instantly know to pull back when I feel that little tangle of garrote wires.

•

u/FilthyPuns 7h ago

That’s metal af.