This is a golden orb weaver spider I saw in Deerfield Island Park in Broward County, Florida. They are excellent spiders and they make beautiful silk.
Basically, I would love to collect lots of these spiders, and maybe have a colony of them in one of the trees around my house. They are native to South Florida, and they collect a lot of mosquitoes and other insects. If I put them in a fruit tree, they'll protect the tree from things like aphids and whiteflies.
Over time, the tree will get wrapped in silk. As the spiders reproduce and catch insects, they'll keep putting more and more silk around the tree.
Once I have enough silk, I'd love to get somebody who knows about sewing - or maybe learn it myself; it would probably be most fun as a group project - and then I'd like to make a lot of materials, including clothing (shirts, pants, socks, hats, etc), bags, ropes (with applications in transport), rope ladders, and so on. It's straight silk, the material that financed the Silk Road in Asia for centuries.
Once I turn a profit from all the silk, I could use the money to plant more trees and breed more spiders.
I think this project would be generally beneficial to everybody involved. It would be beneficial to the spiders because I'd be providing habitat for them. It would be beneficial to Florida because these spiders are native here. (In other regions, we could just use other species of spiders.) It would benefit "society," or "the economy" or whatever, because I'd be accumulating money. Maybe if I get big enough I could even have some employees and "create jobs" without having to destroy a little piece of the Earth to do so. Also, if I have several large trees - say, an avocado, a mango, a starfruit, or some Florida natives like oak and mahogany - each full of these spiders (or any spiders, really), clustered around some benches, it would make a great place to chill. The spiders would protect people from mosquitoes, and there would be plenty of shade. One could hold social or educational gatherings in there.
I have a related idea I call "the Silkman." Basically, I would start by having some golden orb weavers on my body - like parrots on a pirate - twenty-four hours a day.
As the spiders produce silk, I'd wrap it around myself - around my arms, legs, chest - I'd use myself as a spool to collect the silk as it comes out. As I collect more and more silk, it would look like I'm wearing clothing.
I would be able to go out on summer evenings without having to worry about mosquitoes because the spiders would take them.
I would allow the spiders to reproduce on me, until gradually I become a man with hundreds and hundreds of baby spiders all over my body. They would never bite me because they'd grow up used to always having me there (and their bites are not harmful anyway, contrary to popular myth), and we'd have a mutually beneficial relationship because I would attract mosquitoes for them. As they continue to grow up and produce more silk and more offspring, I may have an overabundance, and I could release the spiders I'm not using into a park or somewhere they're needed.
There's no such thing as an overabundance of silk. Once I have large quantities of silk, I can either sell it to clothing manufacturers (who will be able to tell their customers it's sustainably harvested!), or have somebody I know make some shirts or something. One sweater alone can be sold for sixty or seventy dollars.
Another benefit to becoming the Silkman is that I can go to dangerous neighborhoods covered in the spiders, and I could walk around and people will be afraid to mess with me because golden orb weavers are very frightening spiders to people who don't know them.
Over time, the tree will get wrapped in silk. As the spiders reproduce and catch insects, they'll keep putting more and more silk around the tree.
Once I have enough silk, I'd love to get somebody who knows about sewing - or maybe learn it myself; it would probably be most fun as a group project - and then I'd like to make a lot of materials, including clothing (shirts, pants, socks, hats, etc), bags, ropes (with applications in transport), rope ladders, and so on. It's straight silk, the material that financed the Silk Road in Asia for centuries.
Once I turn a profit from all the silk, I could use the money to plant more trees and breed more spiders.
I think this project would be generally beneficial to everybody involved. It would be beneficial to the spiders because I'd be providing habitat for them. It would be beneficial to Florida because these spiders are native here. (In other regions, we could just use other species of spiders.) It would benefit "society," or "the economy" or whatever, because I'd be accumulating money. Maybe if I get big enough I could even have some employees and "create jobs" without having to destroy a little piece of the Earth to do so. Also, if I have several large trees - say, an avocado, a mango, a starfruit, or some Florida natives like oak and mahogany - each full of these spiders (or any spiders, really), clustered around some benches, it would make a great place to chill. The spiders would protect people from mosquitoes, and there would be plenty of shade. One could hold social or educational gatherings in there.
I have a related idea I call "the Silkman." Basically, I would start by having some golden orb weavers on my body - like parrots on a pirate - twenty-four hours a day.
As the spiders produce silk, I'd wrap it around myself - around my arms, legs, chest - I'd use myself as a spool to collect the silk as it comes out. As I collect more and more silk, it would look like I'm wearing clothing.
I would be able to go out on summer evenings without having to worry about mosquitoes because the spiders would take them.
I would allow the spiders to reproduce on me, until gradually I become a man with hundreds and hundreds of baby spiders all over my body. They would never bite me because they'd grow up used to always having me there (and their bites are not harmful anyway, contrary to popular myth), and we'd have a mutually beneficial relationship because I would attract mosquitoes for them. As they continue to grow up and produce more silk and more offspring, I may have an overabundance, and I could release the spiders I'm not using into a park or somewhere they're needed.
There's no such thing as an overabundance of silk. Once I have large quantities of silk, I can either sell it to clothing manufacturers (who will be able to tell their customers it's sustainably harvested!), or have somebody I know make some shirts or something. One sweater alone can be sold for sixty or seventy dollars.
Another benefit to becoming the Silkman is that I can go to dangerous neighborhoods covered in the spiders, and I could walk around and people will be afraid to mess with me because golden orb weavers are very frightening spiders to people who don't know them.
