Fig. 3. Stress-strain curves of supercontracted fibers subjected to stretching in water and drying (tensile testing conditions 20°C, 35%RH, strain rate 0.0002 s^-1). The stretching process is characterized by the alignment parameter, , as defined in the text. At least two samples were tested for each alignment parameter, showing the remarkable reproducibility of the process. Stress-strain curves of forcibly silked (FS) fibers are shown for comparison. The inset shows the whole range of curves produced by the naturally spun (NS) silk when building the web, or from the safety line.