Silkworms in the Trees!

I've been having a lot of fun recently playing with my current batch of silkworms.  As they have been getting bigger I've had a few photo shoots.  Silkworms do not make good models when hungry since they poke their heads up and wave from side to side like little monks praying and swaying back and forth.  So of course we have the obligatory silkworms and coins photos for size (which I will show you at a later time) and also silkworms in the hand.

   So here we have a lovely silkworm on my thumb.  (Click to make photo larger)

          Recently however I have had the best time photographing them in my mulberry trees.

 They eventually climbed around a bit, but found it hard to just sit and chew on a leaf.  I think the selection was too overwhelming.


More than 5,000 years ago our friends the Bombyx Mori lived and crawled around in mulberry trees, ate their leaves, and spun their cocoons.  I am here to tell you that 5,000 years of domesticated living has spoiled these critters and they have a hard time climbing a leaf and holding on.  The idea of crawling vertically has apparently slipped their collective little minds.  Truly if they don't use the skill for 5 millenia is it any wonder that they aren't good at it.  Nope, I could not leave them on the Mulberry tree!   In fact two of the four I took outside today fell off more than once so I simply brought them all  inside after their field trip was done.  I didn't want the unthinkable to happen... they might get eaten by a bird!  Once inside they retired to their horizontal house where they are served sliced mulberry leaves upon demand. 

     The silkworms that we in general buy for classrooms or home rearing are Bombyx Mori, the white silkworm you see here that upon emerging from its cocoon will be a white silk moth.  There are however many other wild silk moths in the world.  The Bombyx Mandarina is the wild ancestor of the Bombyx Mori that is domestically raised around the world.  The website I have linked to is readable via Google Translator.  The original language is Spanish. Emilio Monadero (living in Spain) is an incredible man who has worked tirelessly to create a gene bank for this moth family,  Bombycinae.  He is working to research and preserve different varieties of the Bombycinae family.    The Bombyx Mandarina is still breeding and flying wild in a number of places.  If you look at the website you can see the differences between it and what you will see here.  I might like to raise them, but I can't since you have to be licensed to sell eggs over state lines and I don't think that we are going to be allowed to import a wild silk moth into the country.  We will have to make due with his website. ;)

     There are a fair number of other wild silk moths and I will talk about them as time goes on.


As time goes on I will put up more links, do book reviews, discuss different Silk Moth Varieties, and give some links as to where to buy fun things.  Stay tuned....