Up on the roof of the zoology building, Fritz Vollrath pushes open the door of a small greenhouse and walks in. Tupperware containers full of maggots and decomposing fruit are scattered on every available surface, and the thick and sickly smell of rot fills Vollrath's nostrils. But he ignores these signs that all is well: "It's too hot," he says. Not for the palm by the door or the tall cactus, but for the distinguished architects who are hanging out in the upper corners. Most of them are a species of Nephila, the golden silk spider. The species has an inch-long abdomen, greenish-black with yellow markings, and eight long, delicate legs. Nephila are orb weavers, and the silk orbs they have woven in Vollrath's "spider house" are thick with the flies he intended for them. But the spiders themselves are looking a bit sluggish. Vollrath opens a window to cool things off. Right next to the window there is a web, and Vollrath brushes its owner into a little plastic jar. Come nightfall it will get a bit too chilly in that spot, and anyway he needs a spider to take to the synchrotron in Grenoble.
Vollrath is a handsome, muscular man with shaggy gray hair, a very slight German accent, and a face that broadens readily into a pleased grin when he sees he's amazing you with facts about spider silk. It is pretty amazing stuff. Nephila silk has a tensile strength almost as great as steel's per unit volume and far greater than steel's per unit weight. Kevlar is three times harder to break than Nephila silk, but the spider silk is five times more elastic. Kevlar stops bullets by brute force; Nephila silk stops flies by stretching without breaking. As is so often the case, human engineers trail the elegant solutions of nature.
