Millions of tiny spiders recently fell from the sky in Australia, alarming residents whose properties were suddenly covered with not only the creepy critters, but also mounds of their silky threads. But that's not where the frightful news ends: Experts say such arachnid rains aren't as uncommon as you might think.

This month's spider downpour in the country's Southern Tablelands region is just the most recent example of a phenomenon commonly known as "spider rain" or, in some circles, "angel hair," because of the silky, hairlike threads the spiders leave behind. Ian Watson, who lives in the region affected by the spooky shower, took to Facebook to describe what this strange "weather" looks like, according to the Goulburn Post.

"Anyone else experiencing this "Angel Hair" or maybe aka millions of spiders falling from the sky right now? I'm 10 minutes out of town, and you can clearly see hundreds of little spiders floating along with their webs and my home is covered in them. Someone call a scientist!" Watson wrote on the Goulburn Community Forum Facebook page. [Fishy Rain to Fire Whirlwinds: The World's Weirdest Weather]

So, here at Live Science, call a scientist (or two) is exactly what we did. Rick Vetter, a retired arachnologist at the University of California at Riverside, said Watson and his neighbors most likely saw a form of spider transportation known as ballooning.

"Ballooning is a not-uncommon behavior of many spiders," Vetter told Live Science. "They climb some high area and stick their butts up in the air and release silk. Then they just take off. This is going on all around us all the time. We just don't notice it."

People don't usually notice this ingenious spider behavior because it is not common for millions of spiders to do this at the same time, and then land in the same place, said Todd Blackledge, a biology professor at the University of Akron in Ohio.

"In these kinds of events [spider rains], what's thought to be going on is that there's a whole cohort of spiders that's ready to do this ballooning dispersal behavior, but for whatever reason, the weather conditions haven't been optimal and allowed them to do that. But then the weather changes, and they have the proper conditions to balloon, and they all start to do it," Blackledge told Live Science.

This is most likely what happened in New South Wales, where certain species of small spiders — as well as the tiny hatchlings of larger spider species — are known to balloon around the Outback during late autumn (May) and early spring (August).

But, as Blackledge explained, an abrupt change in the weather or wind pattern may have carried these migrating spiders up and away and then back down to earth en masse — not the orderly dispersal that they (or the residents of the Southern Tablelands region) were expecting.

For the startled citizens of Goulburn and surrounding areas, however, the tiny spiders raining down from the sky probably pose no threat to humans, both Blackledge and Vetter said.

"There's a tiny, tiny number of species that have venom that's actually dangerous to people. And even then, if these are juvenile spiders, they're going to be too small to even bite, in all likelihood," Blackledge said.

But such a huge group of spiders could damage crops, which might become so enshrouded in silk that they don't get enough sunlight, Vetter said.

Watson (the Goulburn resident who recommended that someone call a scientist) noted that tiny spiders had a way of becoming entangled in human facial hair.

"You couldn't go out without getting spider webs on you. And I've got a beard as well, so they kept getting in my beard,"Watson told Yahoo News.

Check out a video on spider ballooning:

Follow Elizabeth Palermo @techEpalermo. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

• In Photos: Fish-Eating Spiders Around the World
• Ewwww! Photos of Bat-Eating Spiders
• 5 Spooky Spider Myths Busted

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When it comes to spiders, people generally know two facts about them — that you swallow around eight of them per year and that their blood is bright blue.

Fortunately, the former is absolutely not true at all, the latter, on the other hand, is mostly correct.

While it’s certainly true that spiders have blue liquid in their veins, the reality is a bit more grounded than is sometimes depicted, with the fluid a much more reserved shade of blue-ish green.

Also, thanks to fact that spiders are (generally) so tiny and contain very little liquid, you’re not going to see too much of this after smashing one.

It should also be noted that, unlike humans, spiders have what is known as an “open circulatory system.” Essentially, their blood is allowed to mix with all the interstitial fluids within their bodies. The scientific term for this mixture is hemolymph, which is a combination of the Greek word for blood (Haîma) and the Latin word for water (Lymph) and it’s defined as: “The circulating fluid in many invertebrates that is functionally similar to the blood and lymph of vertebrates”

So what in this mixture is causing the fluid in the spiders to turn blue? Well, as you may recall, human and indeed all mammal blood is red because of the presence of the protein haemoglobin. The reason haemoglobin makes blood red instead of say, green, is because of the presence of iron as an oxygen-carrying pigment. (And to quickly debunk another popular blue-blood myth: No, deoxygenated human blood does not turn blue. It turns dark red. On a related note, the red juice you see in red meat at the grocery store is not blood.)

Spiders and other arthropods don’t have haemoglobin in their bodies, rather they have a protein known as haemocyanin, which contains copper instead of iron.

However, haemocyanin isn’t bound to any cells in the creature’s body like haemoglobin is, instead it just grooves around their circulatory system at its leisure. When an oxygen atom binds itself to haemocyanin, instead of turning a deep shade of red, it will instead turn a pale blue-ish green, as copper is wont to do when it oxidises. The result in spiders is less than impressive because their bodies contain so little hemolymph to start with; in larger arthropods though, this effect can be quite stunning.

For example, the blood of the horseshoe crab is a delicate shade of baby blue thanks to the presence of haemocyanin, as is the blood of lobsters, crayfish, and most mollusks like slugs and snails.

But what’s even more fascinating (and unique) about horseshoe-crab blood is a chemical found in the amoebocytes of its blood. When this is exposed to a potentially dangerous foreign bacterium, it will immediately coagulate around the threat, rendering it harmless without actually destroying it. This effect is near instant and the blood can be used to detect a potential threat even if it’s diluted as much as one part in a trillion!

This effect is amazingly useful for detecting bacterial contamination in things like medicines and vaccines, or on medical equipment like needles, pacemakers, and numerous other items that are required to be sterile. In fact, no drug on the market today can be certified by the FDA unless it has been tested using this exact method (known as the Limulus amebocyte lysate test, in homage to the species of the crab — Limulus polyphemus).

It’s by far the best way scientists are aware of for detecting whether a batch of medicine or vaccine has been compromised. As such, the blood of these crabs is worth a small fortune, selling for around $60,000 per gallon.

If you’re wondering how this blood is harvested, the crabs (over a half a million per year) are carefully picked up when they visit the shore for breeding purposes and taken in cooled trucks to certified labs where around 30% of their blood is drained, after which they’re returned to the sea.

The blood cells are then separated using centrifugation. Next, the isolated cells are placed in distilled water where they will eventually burst (see Why Salt Preserves Meat for why this happens), releasing the valuable chemical inside. After being purified, it is then freeze-dried and stored to be used for testing.

Approximately 85%-97% of the crabs harvested for this purpose survive and go on their merry way after, with the crab’s blood levels returning to normal in under a week.

Even with the relatively good survival rates, all of this may sound harsh. But there is one type of animal besides humans that, at the least, is glad this property of horseshoe-crab blood was discovered in 1956 by Dr. Frederik Bang — namely, the rabbit. Before the horseshoe-crab-blood method (LAL) of detecting microbial contaminants, a much less accurate and time-consuming system involving testing on live rabbits was used. (In this rabbit pyrogen test, the rabbits were injected with a sample of the substance to be tested.)

So to sum up, if you’re not too technical in your definition of “blood”, spiders do have slightly blue fluid coursing through their bodies. Also, horseshoe-crab blood may someday save your life, if it hasn’t already.

SEE ALSO: Two crazy statistics show Rio's gross water problem isn't going away

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Maybe you've heard that every person swallows eight spiders a year while sleeping.

It's a popular claim on the internet, but to BuzzFeed's Shane Madej, the stat set off his "baloney" detector. So he decided to test it out on himself.

Madej roped in "spider woman"Diana Terranova, a professional spider handler, to see if any of her spiders would crawl into his mouth.

"For the purpose of this experiment I tried to keep my mouth open and inviting, like a cozy shelter of flesh," Madej says in the video.

First, Terranova dangled an orb weaver spider — one that would typically make its way into a home when temperatures get colder — over his mouth.

In the video, Terranova says "What repels a spider? Vibrations, breath, heartbeat, talking. Anything that resonates ... especially the lower hertz, sound very scary to the spider and make it think of a predator."

Next they tried a cellar spider, often found in basements:

They tried putting bigger and bigger spiders on his face until they got to tarantulas. But none seem interested in going inside Madej's mouth.

"Sometimes the spider woman told me to do things that I did not like," Madej says. "But I did them. In the name of science."

Myth busted?

Seems like their findings were correct, according to a Scientific American interview with Rod Crawford, arachnid curator of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle:

More than anything, spiders probably find sleeping humans terrifying. A slumbering person breathes, has a beating heart and perhaps snores — all of which create vibrations that warn spiders of danger.

"Vibrations are a big slice of spiders' sensory universe," Crawford explains, "A sleeping person is not something a spider would willingly approach."

"The video that you linked nicely shows that spiders do not tend to crawl into the open mouth of a human (It also shows that they do not attempt to bite)" arachnologist Jerome Rovner, of Ohio University, told Tech Insider in an email.

Terranova does a fantastic job explaining the intentions of spiders in the video, and seems like a really interesting person in her own right. As it turns out, she's part of the Animal Handler's union and wrangles spiders, insects, and other critters for TV and movie shoots.

She told Science World Report:

I pretty much handle all the insects. I handle the occasional rat or reptile that might be part of a crazy, creepy laboratory scene or horror scene. But 99 percent of the time, I'm working with tarantulas, butterflies and the ever popular maggot.

While many people are afraid of spiders, they are actually really helpful, Terranova says:

Spiders are our friends. Believe it or not, the average house spider eats about 2,000 insects every year — Mosquitoes, silver fish, flies and all the other things that are going to come crawling into your house.

If you haven't seen the BuzzfeedIRL video yet, it's too hilarious not to watch. That is, if you aren't terribly arachnophobic:

And despite Madej's profuse sweating and grimaces of terror, it looks like both he and Terranova both had fun during the video shoot:

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NOW WATCH: 11 amazing facts about your skin

Researchers at Oxford Silk Group, part of Oxford University in the UK, filmed a spider silk harvesting session. Golden Orb Weaver spiders produce up to 80 meters of silk at a time.

Produced by Kevin Reilly. Video courtesy of Oxford University.

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Spiders, with their eight, crawly legs, have kind of a bad reputation — and this viral video of millions of spiders scurrying from a hole in a cliff definitely isn't helping. 

The video was first posted on YouTube in August, but is topping the Facebook trends today thanks I F------ Love Science, which recently shared the video. 

If spiders aren't your thing, you should stop reading now. Right now. Okay, we warned you. 

The video starts off with several kids and a man approaching a hole in a rock cliff. 

"They're not poisonous?" one of the kids asks before the man reaches his hand into the hole and pulls out giant clump of daddy long legs, or Opiliones, as they're more formally known, according to IFLS.

Immediately, you can hear one of the kids screaming. 

We can't blame them. Just look at all these creepy crawlies. 

You can watch the entire nightmare here or below. 

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If you're reading this, you probably aren't a spider, and may even have a strong aversion toward eight-legged, web-weaving creepy crawlies — especially giant ones.

However, we regret to inform you that spiders of epic proportions are more than just the stuff of fiction, and do indeed walk among us.

Even more alarming is that scientists are unable to explain why they are growing to such an enormous size.

The good news is that you're highly unlikely to ever come across one of the giant spiders in question, since they only live in the oceans around the polar regions.

Interestingly, gigantism has been observed in a number of other Arctic and Antarctic species, leading biologists to conclude that certain elements of the polar environment must be conducive to humongous body size.

However, the quest to decipher exactly why some organisms living at the ends of the Earth become giants has so far not produced results.

Several hypotheses have been put forward, with some scientists claiming that large body size may have developed as an evolutionary trait to enable animals to withstand long periods of starvation during the winter, when resources tend to become scarce in the polar regions.

Others have suggested that some of these species may somehow be descended from creatures that invaded the Arctic and Antarctic from the deep sea, where high rates of gigantism have also been recorded.

However, a recent study appears to lend support to a different theory, which revolves around the availability of oxygen in the polar oceans.

These waters can hit temperatures of -1.8 degrees Celsius (29 degrees Fahrenheit), and therefore tend to be rich in oxygen, since oxygen is more soluble in cold water than warm water.

It has subsequently been suggested that this high availability of oxygen — coupled with the fact that low temperatures slow animals' metabolism down and reduce their need for oxygen — could facilitate their gigantism.

To test this hypothesis, a team of marine biologists drilled deep beneath the Antarctic sea ice, where they encountered a number of giant sea spiders, as can be seen here.

Technically, these enormous aquatic critters are not actually arachnids, but belong to a class of arthropods called pycnogonids. Normally they are pretty small, although some can grow to gargantuan proportions, reaching sizes of 50 centimeters (20 inches).

After collecting samples, the team performed a number of experiments in order to determine how changing oxygen levels in the water would affect their subjects.

According to Hakai Magazine, the researchers found that placing the spiders in water with lower oxygen concentrations had a negative impact on their well-being, thus suggesting that the high availability of oxygen in the cold Antarctic water may well be vital to their ability to survive as giants.

However, this research is far from conclusive, and the team insists that much more work is needed in order to determine the full cause of polar gigantism. In other words, we still don't really know why giant sea spiders exist.

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NOW WATCH: NASA says Antarctica is gaining ice

The black widow spider can be found on every continent except Antarctica. Its venom is toxic and painful, leaving victims to feel the effects long after the bite.

Produced by Kevin Reilly

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Eight hands may be better than two when it comes to mass production.

Earlier this month, engineers from electronics manufacturer Siemens completed prototypes on a 3D-printing spider robot that could be used to build entire car bodies and airplane fuselages.

Instead of relying on human workers for large-scale projects, companies could use the robots to cut costs and speed up production.

"We see this project as one of the first attempts in mobile manufacturing that will enable us to fabricate objects in places that we simply could not have built within before," Livio Dalloro, head of Siemens Corporate Technology's research group, tells Tech Insider.

The machines are called SiSpis, and they're not as creepy as you might think. Their big, longing eyes more closely resemble WALL-E than actual spiders — a design consideration Dalloro says was crucial.

"Based on the results from one of our test groups, we decided to add an eyeglass to the robots to soften its appearance," Dalloro says, a change that even the folks at Pixar say they had to make when creating WALL-E's oddly endearing goggles.

Each SiSpi works in tandem with the other robots according to their specific programming. The "eyes" on the SiSpi face are actually laser scanners, which read the surrounding area and talk to the robot's extruder arms about where to build.

Based on software Dalloro and his team created, each of the robots can then work on a specific "box" of space without getting in the other robots' way.

Dalloro admits that it's too early to tell how many robots would be needed to construct a car or a fuselage, or how long an entire build might take. What the team does know is that even robot spiders get tired. When one SiSpi's battery is running low, which happens after about two hours, it'll alert a nearby team member that it's going to charge back up. The fully-charged spider will then take over the duties of the first spider until it returns at a full charge.

Right now, the only material SiSpis can handle is a mixture of corn starch and sugarcane known as poly lactic acid. It's one of two simple plastics that allow for rudimentary print jobs, the other being an oil-based plastic called Acylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, or ABS.

Dalloro says the next phase will focus on 3D-printing with materials "that will satisfy the industrial and scientific needs of Siemens," but he says he can't divulge which materials specifically.

Dalloro says he's most excited to contribute to technological innovation in the robotics space.

"Without the advancement in the optical manufacturing space, Newton wouldn't have manufactured the polished parabolic-mirrors to validate or advance his scientific ideas in astrophysics," he says.

Given the impending rise of robot automation, an army of red and blue spider robots could very well be the next parabolic mirror.

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When Al Gore sat down for a chat with astrophysicist and StarTalk Radio host Neil deGrasse Tyson, we expected the conversation would be wide-ranging and fascinating.

We did not expect it would turn to goats.

About 14 minutes into the interview, which is part of Tech Insider's Innovators series, Tyson asked Gore about the ethics of biotechnology.

"We all have to be prepared to engage in conversations about some of the difficult choices that will become available to us, like trait selection, like crossing species boundaries," Gore replied.

Then the former Vice President adds: "You know about spider goats?"

Tyson's ears perk up. "Sounds... Interesting," Tyson replies.

"You can splice the genes from orb-weaving spiders into goats and produce spider goats," Gore explains, "which mercifully, look like goats."

Gore is not making this up. The goats have four legs, two eyes, and by most accounts are average-looking goats. When the BBC visited the first herd of goats at Utah State University in 2012, they even had adorable names like "Pudding" and "Freckles."

But they are special in one, very important way: They've been genetically modified to produce spider silk in their milk.

How to make spider-goat silk

The silk produced by golden orb weaving spiders is tougher than Kevlar but has the elasticity and lightness of of nylon.

That makes the silk a very valuable substance.

The trouble is that it's impractical to raise spiders to produce enough for industrial use — it took more than a million spiders and 70 human workers working for four years to make a single 11-foot by 4-foot piece of fabric.

Also, the spiders have a tendency to eat each other.

So in the early 2000s, Canadian company Nexia Biotechnologies approached molecular biologist Randy Lewis, then at the University of Wyoming, to explore producing the silk through other means.

Nexia went out of business in 2009 and Lewis has since moved from Wyoming to Utah State University, but the spider goats he created are still alive and spinning. Lewis estimates they're now on their eighth or ninth generation of the modified goats.

The modification process begins with a single gene — the silk-spinning gene of the golden orb-weaving spider in this case — which is added to goat DNA.

"You take an egg," Lewis explains, "you take out the nucleus and chromosomes, [then] put in the chromosomes from the cell you did all the genetic manipulation in."

When the egg grows, the genes divide and multiply — and with it, the gene that tells the goats' body to produce the spider-silk protein. The gene is then passed on through the generations.

"The property of the fiber we're spinning now is, at best, one-half to two-thirds as strong [as the spider silk,] but just as elastic" Lewis told Tech Insider during a recent phone call. (For the record, that's still incredibly strong.)

Each goat, Lewis says, produces about an ounce of the protein per milking session, yielding several thousand yards of a single spider-silk thread.

And, it should be noted, the goats don't excrete a single fiber — that would be weird.

The milk has to be separated and refined several times, then washed, freeze-dried, and turned into a powder. The powder can be spun into a fiber, or transformed into a coating or adhesive. (The milk isn't ever kept for human consumption.)

While the silk may not ever be inexpensive enough for truly widespread use, Lewis said, there are some industries that will be willing to invest in a higher quality, if higher priced, material.

What to do with spider-goat silk

In December 2015, Utah State University announced it had landed a $1 million contract with the Army to produce the silk. Textiles woven from the silk are lighter than Kevlar, and, unlike nylon, don't melt, making it an attractive material for body armor.

But Lewis pointed out that there is also exciting potential in medical technology. The human body doesn't reject the fiber like it does other materials. The silk could be used for sutures, skin grafts, or for complex jaw repair-surgery.

Lewis is also experimenting with other organisms that might be able to help produce dragline silk: silkworms, alfalfa, and bacteria, to name a few. But none of them, he said, have seen the same level of success as the spider goats.

The spider goats have their detractors, who say it's "fundamentally wrong" to manipulate animals like this. Lewis counters by pointing out that people have basically doing this since they started domesticating and breeding animals.

He calls his research "precision genetics"— changing just one gene to get a specific outcome — whereas for millennia, people simply bred animals together in the hopes the desired trait would appear in the offspring.

"Take a look at what people have done with dogs," he said, pointing out that we've bred several varieties to the point of uselessness. "Nobody seems to say a word."

---

Back in Tech Insider's studio, Gore gives Tyson a questioning glace: "Are you okay with [spider goats]?"

"Completely!" The astrophysicist says.

Gore's larger point is that while spider goats represent a small, mostly benign change that has huge potential to help people; we're going to be faced with some hard questions when designer babies start hitting the scene.

But for now, Lewis and his caprine webslingers just might be the next big thing.

Watch the whole interview with Tyson and Gore below. (The spider goat reference happens about two-thirds the way through the video.)

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NOW WATCH: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Al Gore on the future of our planet — and everything else

Engineers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have finished an advanced prototype of a device called Z-Man. Inspired by the gecko's ability to stick to surfaces, Z-Man will allow soldiers to scale walls quickly — like a real-life Spider-Man.

Produced by Zach Wasser and Corey Protin. Video courtesy of DARPA.

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It turns out the bulletproof vest of the future won't be made from super-strong plastics, but from spider silk.

That's what the US Army is betting a ten-month contract on. On July 12, the Department of Defense announced that it gave Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, which bills itself as a "Spider Silk Technology Company," a potential $1 million contract to research and develop body armor made of the company's genetically modified spider silk, called "Dragon Silk." 

The silk is ultra-resilient silk due to a composite of spider proteins, but because of the spiders' cannibalistic mating habits, it's hard to produce the material in mass quantities. So Kraig genetically inserted the proteins into silkworms, since their bodies are already suited to silk production.

Spider silk is known as a resilient material in the textiles industry. A study from Nature found that spider silk has extraordinary toughness, meaning it's hard to fracture by penetrative forces. One study observed that the Darwin's Bark Spider produces silks with a toughness ten times that of Kevlar.

Scientists are also dabbling with adding graphene, a carbon-based "miracle material" to spider silk, making it even more resilient. 

"Dragon Silk scores very highly in tensile strength and elasticity, which makes it one of the toughest fibers known to man and the ideal material for many applications," Jon Rice, COO of the company, said in a statement. 

Rice told Live Science that the lab got costs for its Dragon Silk down to $300 per kilogram (roughly $136 a pound), down from $30-40,000 a kilogram ($13,600-$18,000 a pound) — a number that's hard to verify because there aren't any spider silk weaves on the market.

The bottom line is this, though: the technology could be commercially viable soon enough, to the point where American tax dollars could reasonably pay for it.

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Dan Widmaier is not really a fashion guy — "by any stretch of the imagination," he clarifies — but that hasn't stopped the chemist from taking on the apparel industry.

His company, Bolt Threads, has engineered a sustainable and versatile material from synthetic spider silk that may one day be used to make iPad covers, car seats, and even name-brand clothing. According to Widmaier, synthetic spider silk is the fabric of the future.

That's because the silk fibers that insects and spiders produce in the natural world have the elasticity of a rubber band and a level of tensile strength (the amount of pressure a material can stand before it breaks) comparable to steel. These characteristics combined make spider silk two to three times tougher than Kevlar, the material used to make bulletproof vests.

Scientists have tried to recreate this naturally occurring phenomenon in a lab for 30 years, since material made from these fibers could revolutionize design. Imagine if a synthetic version was woven into our clothing. It's not absurd to think that your Patagonia jacket might protect you from a mass shooting, or that your socks would never tear no matter how many times they cycle through the washing machine.

But the technology that would allow scientists to create synthetic spider silk lagged, and they couldn't recruit spiders to do the job because spiders are cannibals and would eat each other in captivity.

Widmaier entered the race to find a solution while completing his doctoral studies at UC San Francisco, because he "thought it was interesting," he says. He has since teamed up with minds from Nike, Google, Amyris, and universities like UC Berkeley, to deliver the world's first commercially available synthetic spider silk.

Bolt Threads is on pace to produce its first metric ton of the stuff this year.

There are no spiders harmed in the making of Bolt Threads' silk. Instead, the company combines genetically modified yeast, water, and sugar and turns it to raw silk through a process of fermentation (the same one that converts sugars to alcohol to make beer). The resulting goop has the texture of molasses.

A machine then sucks up the goop and pumps it through tiny holes to create the filaments. Remember the Play Doh Crazy Haircut toy set? The machine works like that, churning out fibers instead of a Play Doh dolls' hair. The fibers are then knit or woven into fabrics.

The company can also form new varieties of silk by altering the DNA of the genetically modified yeast to tweak the formula. They've made 3,000 different silks at small-scale to date.

Considering the infinite uses for such a miracle material, the decision to tackle the apparel industry first might seem surprising. But Widmaier describes the choice as an obvious one from a commercialization perspective.

The US is the world's biggest market for silk — silk fabric imports average $2 billion a year. But it's an incredibly flawed material, since it requires special washing and yellows over time. Synthetic spider silk could squash those problems.

"We also would like to fulfill a promise of innovation in a space that hasn't seen innovation at a regular chip," Widmaier says. Cue the apparel industry.

In May, Bolt Threads announced a partnership with outdoor clothing maker, Patagonia, to develop the company's fabric. It's still unclear which products will use synthetic spider silk — they won't hit store shelves until 2018, according to Widmaier.

Widameir guesses that the initial consumer goods made from synthetic spider silk will be heavily marketed as such. The material is innovative, it's sexy. Eventually, though, he hopes to see synthetic spider silk become as ubiquitous as nylon.

"There's something about 'new' that consumers want, which is why they're willing to buy that differentially from something else,"Widameir says."Now, in the long run, if you really want to change the world and build a more sustainable supply chain in consumer products ... eventually, [synthetic spider silk] becomes the expected baseline."

Widameir hints that Bolt Threads may launch their own apparel products before Patagonia's come out. We'll keep our eyes peeled for a Spider-Man suit.

SEE ALSO: These Silicon Valley 'biohackers' are fasting their way to longer, better lives

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NOW WATCH: How often you should really wash your clothes

"Superbugs"— bacteria that have grown resistant to drugs and medicine designed to kill them — are becoming a serious threat. Some scientists are turning to an unlikely source in hopes of finding new ways to fight them.

Video courtesy of Reuters

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The latest project from the Institute for Technologies and Architectural Research is an eye-catching one! Graduate Maria Yablonina designed Mobile Robotic Fabrication System for Filament Structures. It includes two wall-climbing robots that hand off a micro filament fiber to build a large nest structure.

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The black widow spider can be found on every continent except Antarctica. Its venom is toxic and painful, leaving victims to feel the effects long after the bite.

Produced by Kevin Reilly

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Tarantulas are incredibly fearsome and intimidating, but it's not at the top of its food chain. The footage was captured by USGS Ecologist Todd Esque in Mexico.

Produced by Emmanuel Ocbazghi. Original reporting by Jessica Orwig.

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A new study has just revealed that spiders are even more impressive - or terrifying, depending on your point of view — than we'd ever imagined.

Arachnids don't have ears, but it turns out spiders can hear you talking from metres away - despite the fact that many researchers previously assumed they couldn't hear at all.

"Surprisingly, we found that they also possess an acute sense of hearing," lead researcher Paul Shamble from Cornell University told Hannah Devlin from The Guardian.

"They can hear sounds at distances much farther away than previously thought, even though they lack ears with the eardrums typical of most animals with long-distance hearing."

Instead of eardrums, spiders use the tiny, sensitive hairs on their legs to detect noises, the new study suggests.

Although it was previously known that spiders' leg hairs were sensitive to airborne vibrations — such as sound waves — the assumption was that this only extended to sounds around a spider's body length or a few centimetres away.

And no one had thought the arachnids were then interpreting those vibrations into neural activity — which would mean they're actually ‘hearing’ those sound waves, rather than just sensing them.

But now new research based on spider brain patterns shows they can actually hear humans talking and clapping from up to 5 meters away.

Which is... great news... If you're listening, spider friends, I'm really happy for you :|

The research was performed on small North American jumping spiders,Phidippus audax, and the coolest part is that the discovery was made purely by accident.

Shamble and his team were making neural recordings of the spiders' brains to find out how they processed visual information.

"One day, [co-researcher Gil Menda] was setting up one of these experiments and started recording from an area deeper in the brain than we usually focused on," Shamble told Maarten Rikken over at Research Gate.

"As he moved away from the spider, his chair squeaked across the floor of the lab. The way we do neural recordings, we set up a speaker so that you can hear when neurons fire — they make this really distinct 'pop' sound — and when Gil's chair squeaked, the neuron we were recording from started popping. He did it again, and the neuron fired again."

That was surprising enough, but Menda and Shamble then started clapping at increasing distances to see when the spider would stop registering it. They got up to 5 metres away, and the spider was still responding.

"Based on everything they knew it shouldn't have been possible, but there it was,"said Menda. "It was just the beginning of months and years of work, but it was an incredible start."

To figure out exactly how the spiders were hearing them, the team then placed water droplets on their legs to dull the vibrations of the hairs.

When they did this, the auditory neurons in the brain stopped firing in response to sounds, suggesting that the spiders couldn't hear anymore.

Further experiments confirmed that, although the spiders responded to claps, they were most sensitive to low frequencies (about 80-130 Hz), which is around the frequency of the wingbeats of parasitoid wasps, which prey on jumping spiders. It's also around the pitch of a deep male voice.

But even though the spiders have acute hearing, it wouldn't necessarily sound the way it does to us, due to how their brains process it.

"It probably sounds like a really bad phone connection,"Shamble told The Guardian. "They probably can tell that you’re talking from across the room, but they’re certainly not listening to you."

The team is now investigating whether other spider species, such as wolf spider and fishing spiders, have the same ability.

Their research has been published in Current Biology.

(Now let's all just sneak out of the room really quietly and hope they don't hear us.)

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Engineers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have finished an advanced prototype of a device called Z-Man. Inspired by the gecko's ability to stick to surfaces, Z-Man will allow soldiers to scale walls quickly — like a real-life Spider-Man.

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A chic necktie made of synthetic spider silk may put Spider-Man's suit to shame.

Bolt Threads, a startup that manufactures synthetic spider silk products, unveiled its first apparel item on March 10. The limited-edition knit necktie is the first spider silk product ever made available for purchase, according to the company. It will retail for $314.

The material is the culmination of seven years of research from a team of dozens of scientists, engineers, technicians, and designers. Bolt Threads has raised about $90 million in venture capital funding to date. 

For 30 years, scientists have tried to recreate spider silk in a lab. The fibers that insects and spiders produce in the natural world have the elasticity of a rubber band and a level of tensile strength (the amount of pressure a material can stand before it breaks) comparable to steel.

These characteristics combined make spider silk two to three times tougher than Kevlar, the material used to make bulletproof vests.

In 2009, Dan Widmaier, David Breslauer, and Ethan Mirsky launched Bolt Threads because the founders saw a path to spider silk that didn't involve actual spiders, which are hard to control in the lab (they're cannibals and eat each other in captivity).

The company combines genetically modified yeast, water, and sugar and turns it to raw silk through fermentation — the same process that converts sugars to alcohol to make beer. The resulting goop has the texture of molasses. A machine then sucks up the goop and pumps it through tiny holes to create the filaments. The fibers are knit or woven into fabrics.

In August 2016, Widmaier told Business Insider that the company can also form new varieties of silk by tweaking the DNA of the genetically modified yeast. They've made 3,000 different silks at small-scale to date, and are on pace to produce their first metric ton.

Bolt Threads' first apparel product, a unisex knit necktie, looks like it was made for the Gap. It's lightweight, versatile, and only available in blue for purchase.

"We wanted to demonstrate the reality of a completely new way of manufacturing textiles, one that has nearly unlimited potential for innovation and also produces a sustainable product," Widmaier said in a statement.

Bolt Threads will release only 50 neckties. They'll be available for purchase via a lottery on the company website that opens on March 11 and closes on March 14.

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