Largest piece of natural spider silk

On 25 September 2009, a 3.3 x 1.2 m (11 x 4 ft) piece of cloth made from natural spider silk was put on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, USA. A team of 70 people spent four years collecting more than one million golden orb spiders from telephone poles in Madagascar, while a second team of 12 removed up to 24 m (80 ft) of silk filament from each spider. To create 1 oz of silk, 14,000 spiders must be "milked" (the equivalent of 50,000 spiders for a kilogram of silk). Spider silk is very elastic and has a higher tensile strength than kevlar or steel. It can stretch up to 40% of its length without snapping.