Silkworm is an interesting little animal. It is written in the Collection of Ancient Myths in China that the legendary silkworm was once regarded as a god worm in the sky, and it was the Empress Huangmu who sent it to the world to help mankind resist the cold. Since then, silkworms have created beauty and wealth for mankind according to God's will.
Silkworm's life is short, with a life cycle of less than three months, but silkworm has an extraordinary life. Her life changes endlessly, the color will change, the size will change, and the shape will change.
Silkworm eggs are changed from silkworm eggs, which are less than half the size of sesame seeds. When they were first laid, they were milky yellow, like small balls, like small patties. After a long period of gestation, the silkworm eggs turned gray, and after a while, they magically turned black. Under the magnifying glass, you can see the young silkworm bent in the egg shell. Clever silkworms wait until late spring and early summer, and they can't wait to bite through the egg shell with their small mouths and explore their little brains to get out of the cave. The newly hatched silkworm is very small and dark like an ant, so the silkworm raiser calls it "ant silkworm" figuratively. Silkworm has the characteristics of insects, its body is covered with fine villi, and it has fourteen feet (six in the head and eight in the body), and many feet can be firmly attached to objects, which provides great convenience for her to feed. Time goes by, and the ants and silkworms grow up day by day. But the skin of silkworms is like clothes we wore when we were young, and we can't grow up with our bodies, so they adopted the method of changing their skins to solve the problem when they grew up. Silkworms have to shed their skins four times in their lifetime. About two weeks after birth, the silkworm began to shed its skin for the first time, which may be the reason of "pain". Silkworm peeling is both careful and skillful. I once timed my watch, and the whole process was only seven or eight minutes. This is a wonderful process. Careful observation will reveal that the silkworm did not eat for a long time before shelling, and stretched its head lazily. Although it was constantly excreting, its body became loose and thin, and its appearance looked like the wrinkled skin of an elderly man. At first, the silkworm split a hole from the top of its head and its head shell fell off from the top of its head. But it's not easy to take off the coat. The silkworm has a good way. She uses her tail to fix her body, moves her body forward a little, and the tail pulls the skin back a little. In this way, the silkworm finally takes off her coat. After the silkworm is peeled twice, its body color will gradually turn white, and the fluff on its body will degenerate accordingly, and obvious links will appear on its body. After the third peeling, a small thorn cone grows in the sky at the tail, and the body becomes crystal clear. At this time, you can see the silk tube in the silkworm body.
Silkworms mainly feed on mulberry leaves. The ancestors of silkworms really understood the scientific truth. Hundreds of thousands of plants in the world chose mulberry leaves. In fact, it's not surprising. You might as well pick a mulberry leaf, tear it open by hand or rub it, and you will find that the mulberry leaf is full of milky white juice. The biology teacher told me that this juice contains a lot of protein. Silkworms eat mulberry leaves and absorb rich nutrients, which can not only thrive day by day, but also provide enough nutrients for silk-making in the future.
Silkworm is a pretty "smelly" animal. She is very gluttonous, never knows how to save, and keeps eating from morning till night. Silkworm pursues fullness, and it is appropriate to describe her as a lady of the Tang Dynasty before cocoon formation. Silkworms are also very particular about eating mulberry leaves. Silkworms use their mouths to "cut" food bit by bit along the leaves, leaving traces that are very regular, like sawtooth. The process of silkworm feeding has long been called "nibbling" by the ancients, and it is explained as "gradual invasion" in Xinhua Dictionary. In fact, there is a great reason why silkworms eat like this, which is determined by the special structure of their mouths. If you look closely at silkworms, you will see that their mouths are split in two. When they chew, the two petals of their mouths are like a pair of scissors, so they can only "cut food" along the mulberry leaves.
After more than two months, the life of silkworms reached a climax, and they wanted to create a miracle. First, she wants to build a beautiful house for herself. Don't underestimate them. Silkworm is a natural craftsman with a unique set of architectural stunts. They first carefully searched for a corner, and then they used their building material-silk. She fixed her body with her tail, aimed at the selected position with her mouth, spit out silk to fix one end, twisted her body in situ, and spit it out to the other end with her mouth to fix it. Just out of the belly, the silk is as sticky as all-purpose glue, and every silk sticks firmly. Usually, silkworms have to build a cuboid-shaped frame, and then constantly add silk for encryption. Within a few hours, silkworms form an oval cocoon on the cuboid frame. Silkworms cocoon from the outside to the inside. At the beginning, you will see the body of the silkworm curled up in the cocoon, regularly filling silk, and slowly thickening the cocoon, which blocks your view like a curtain, but you can still hear the "squeaking" sound of the silkworm spinning to build a house with your ears close to the cocoon. Think about it, how persistent and hardworking silkworms are. The cocoon with flawless white walls was built in less than a day. Why do silkworms form cocoons into ellipses? I know from my math teacher: the same volume, the round body area is the least used. You must be as surprised by the intelligence of silkworms as I am! It's a pity that cocoons block people's sight. It would be even more amazing if there were a way to see how silkworms pupate and become moths.