Strange IndiaStrange India


Silk worm farming in India: how your silk is made

You’ve probably heard that silkworms “make” silk, but they don’t just sit around happily squeezing it out. A silkworm is a caterpillar, and when it’s time to turn into a moth, the caterpillar creates a cocoon for itself—out of a single strand of silk. All you have to do is unwind it, and you’ll have about half a mile of a continuous, strong thread. (Compare that to cotton, whose fibers are only about an inch long and must be twisted together to make thread. This is why silk is so strong and smooth.)

To get that thread, you can’t wait for the moth to emerge; it rips the cocoon open when it does. So you need to bake, steam, or boil the cocoon to kill the moth, and then you can unwind it to make your own cocoon. I mean, clothes.



Source link

By AUTHOR

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *