Colorful Cotton Candy
Title: Colorful Cotton Candy
Year: Unavailable
Description: In this work are silkworm moth cocoons of different colors. The white, yellow, flesh-colored, and light green cocoons are produced by different strains of silkworm moth larvae (silkworms), which feed on mulberry leaves. Due to differences in their metabolism and absorption of pigments by the digestive tract and silk glands, they produce cocoons of different colors. For example, yellow cocoons are produced by carotenoids and yellow pigments in the mulberry leaves entering the sericin after being metabolized.
Insect: Silkworm moth Bombyx mori (Linnaeus, 1758)
Order Lepidoptera
Family Bombycidae
Introduction: Humans domesticated silkworms long ago. These larvae of the silkworm moth feed on mulberry leaves. A fifth instar larva affixes itself in place, then continuously move its head in a figure-8 pattern while spinning silk from its lower labial silk glands, forming a cocoon in which it wraps itself and begins to pupate. A silkworm can produce 1,000 meters or more of silk thread, which is made up of proteins such as sericin and fibroin. Degummed silk fibroin has commercial applications such as in the production of textiles and surgical sutures.
Photographed by: Zhang Jia-Hao; Gu Shi-Hong
