Brenna Lynn Photography

Spiders are found all over the world (to my delight and to the dismay of others). Their sizes range from the Samoan moss spider (Patu marplesi, body length 0.3 mm) to the Goliath birdeater (Theraphosa blondi, body length 11.9 cm). And to put to rest the misconception that not all spiders are poisonous - all spiders have venom glands, and thus they are all venomous (and no, the most venomous one is NOT the daddy long-legs, or harvestmen, though they are good predators). Spider

Music has been a part of human culture for centuries, created to inspire and empower, to tell and share stories of life lessons and personal thoughts. Various natural and synthetic materials are now used to make the instruments. Woods, gourds, metals, horse hairs, goat skins, pig intestines, plastics, and, yes, spider silk. When thinking of instruments, the only way to possibly connect arthropods to music was the maintenance; some insects can damage priceless instruments, esp

Let's go back to ancient China for a moment. Legend has it that in 2,640 B.C., the Chinese empress Si-Ling-Chi pulled on one end of a silkworm cocoon in a mulberry tree to find that it was on continuous thread. She spun multiple threads to form a single sturdy thread and created the first wearable art for the emperor. The emperor then is said to have created the methods of rearing these silkworms. The secrets of the silk remained in China for many years, but eventually the pe

If you love to wear actual pieces of an insect as jewelry, you might also be interested in obtaining some that were made by an insect. The caddisfly larvae to be exact. These guys are in the order Trichoptera, and have short adult life spans (they emerge, mate, and die). My tennis team, and all of the Lawrence University campus in Appleton, WI, battled large quantities of the newly emerged adults, who apparently preferred to mate on our white tennis uniforms. But the larvae a

Besides being used for textiles and elaborate murals (see previous Creative with Insects - Elytra Part I post), beetle elytra are also used in jewelry. Most of what can be found online is also from the beetle family Buprestidae, the metallic green coloration is popular in both contemporary jewelry and traditional tribal pieces. There is actually a spectacular necklace from South America where the main component is a large buprestid (yet the label states that it's a scarab bee