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Old 10-27-2010, 06:52 PM   #6
Ze'Manel Cunha
 
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
Default Re: Would a 9 lb sapient spider producing 1/10 lb of silk a day suspend your disbelie

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
I'm creating a non-physics violating species of sapient spider-like creatures.
But I can't for the life of me find out how much silk a spider produces let alone as a function of body mass.
So as a number pulled out of my spinnerets, does 1/10 lb for maximum output seem reasonable? Or would you say only 1/100 lb per day, etc.?
Spider silk is very, very light, that is what makes it so valuable.

According to the following article, they used over a million golden orb spider milkings to make a 2.6 pound garment.

They cite 14,000 spiders to make 1 ounce of silk, or about 0.00007 oz per spider per day.

These golden orb spiders weigh maybe around 0.035 ounces, or about .002 of silk per ounce of spider.

You're scaling them up about 4,000 times to get to 9 lbs, so you should be ok with about an 0.3 oz max* in a day for a 9 lbs spider.

Mind you, if you do milk the spider for all the silk it's worth you may need to give it time to replenish itself before milking it completely again.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/spider-silk/
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/spidersilk/

Last edited by Ze'Manel Cunha; 10-30-2010 at 09:44 AM. Reason: *Correction to 0.3 oz per day.
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