9 Movie Mad Scientists That Might Have Been Onto Something

Okay, real talk, if Spiderman had really existed then the most helpful thing he could have done would be to sit and produce silk all day like some kind of milking cow in lycra.

Spider silk is incredibly useful due to the fact that it is immensely strong and incredibly light. Researchers have been looking into all kinds of uses for it, from bulletproof vests to artificial limbs, and there are undoubtedly many more applications that we haven't even thought of yet.

The problem is that spiders don't exactly take kindly to being farmed. They are fiercely territorial and tend to kill and eat anything that wanders onto their patch. Seeing as having half of your livestock liquefying the other half isn't exactly a sound business model, scientists have had to think outside the box for an alternative solution.

And, boy did they think outside that box. The box is a dot to them.

By splicing the spider genes responsible for producing "dragline" silk - the strongest kind that spiders use for anchoring their webs - into the DNA of a goat, the offspring of that goat who retain that gene will produce spider silk in their milk.

We have yet to ascertain their ability to fight crime on the side, but baby steps and all that. Happily, the scientist in charge of the research, on Professor Randy Lewis, is in on the joke and has plastered his office in Spiderman posters.