What is Silkworm ?

The ailanthus moth (Samia walkeri), a large, olive-green saturnid moth used in China to produce a coarse grade of silk, was imported to the United States along with its food plant, the Chinese ailanthus tree, as the basis of an industry that never materialized; the moth has been firmly established in the New York City area since 1861.

Diseases of silkworms have occasioned important scientific work. When Pasteur saved the French silk industry from destruction by pébrine, a protozoan disease of insects, in the mid-18th cent., he also made an important contribution to the germ theory of disease.

The common silkworm, Bombyx mori, is classified in the phylum Arthropoda, class Insecta, order Lepidoptera, family Bombycidae.

A silkworm must spin about 300,000 loops of silk to make its cocoon!

The adult moth almost always emerges in the morning, usually before 9am.

Silk moths do not eat or drink at all during their life time, they survive on stored body fats and fluids

A silkworm will eat about 50 times its final weight during its eating period

The silkworm will shed its skin 4 times during its larval stage

The silkworm sheds its skin by attaching the tail end of its skin to the surface on what it is resting. It then simply walks out of it.

Silk moth cocoons are made from a single strand of silk. One cocoon can be made of up to half a mile of unbroken silk. This means the silkworm would have to produce the silk at a rate of 25 feet an hour!!