Spiders use silk for many purposes, including the trailing safety dragline, wrapping eggs for reproduction, protective retreats and catching prey.

Sorry, but you drew a spider.

Spider silk is almost entirely protein.

And on the bottom, this is the repeat sequence for the egg case, or tubuliform silk protein, for the exact same spider.

They hatch adders' eggs, and weave the spider's web he who eats of their eggs dies and that which is crushed breaks out into a viper.

They hatch adders' eggs, and weave the spider's web he who eats of their eggs dies and that which is crushed breaks out into a viper.

They hatch cockatrice' eggs, and weave the spider's web he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.

They hatch cockatrice' eggs, and weave the spider's web he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.

Like the spider who eats her mate when he is no longer a necessity?

To give you an idea of what a spider silk protein looks like, this is a dragline silk protein, it's just a portion of it, from the black widow spider.

But how about variation among spider species, so looking at one type of silk and looking at different species of spiders?

The frame and radii of this web is made up of one type of silk, while the capture spiral is a composite of two different silks the filament and the sticky droplet.

How does an individual spider make so many kinds of silk?

Spider

You Spider!

It's a spider.

Spiders?

A silk gland kind of looks like a sac with a lot of silk proteins stuck inside.

Silks made by the same spider can have dramatically different repeat sequences.

Some of them are orb weaving spiders and some of them are non orb weaving spiders.

Scytodes doesn't use a web at all to catch prey.

Spider

A cobweb.

These are spinneret glands on the abdomen of a spider.

Most spiders use copious amounts of silk, and silk is essential to their survival and reproduction.

It doesn't take long from working with spiders to start noticing how essential silk is to just about every aspect of their life.

There's quite a bit of variation within the fibers that an individual spider can make.

Spider

The Spider of Finance

I'm afraid of spiders.

Most spiders use copious amounts of silk, and silk is essential to their survival and reproduction.

Tom hates spiders.

I'm really scared of spiders.

I hate cobwebs.

Means spider !

There are two orders of magnitude more spiders than primates.

So silk comes out of the spinnerets, and for those of us spider silk biologists, this is what we call the business end of the spider.

So this means that both spiders and spider silk have been around for 380 million years.

Spider Three Decks

Spiderette

Penguin Spider

Spiders like to build spiderwebs.

Vista styled spider layout

It looks like a spider.

This is a picture of the spinnerets coming out of a spider and the silk being formed from a spider. Isn't that beautiful?