Silkworms...finally

Ok, I have been promising the last installment of insect posts for a while now....and I was waiting for the silkworms to complete their life cycle. The tragedy in this post is that they have been in their cocoons for about 1 month and I am a little doubtful that they will release their enzyme and crawl out of the carefully woven silk to flutter, mate, and then die.

So these little preciosos started as little grayish blue eggs and hatched into wonderful little caterpillars with large heads and fuzzy little bodies. In the picture below you can see the three first instars (stages) of their lives. The one in the middle is at the end of the first instar....all balck and fizzy. The second instar is the one in which they get a little bigger, loose the fuzz, and get a bigger abdomen.

Another little picture of the first few weeks of life for these caterpillars.

Here is the third instar...they are so cute!

You guessed it instar number four and the classic "I am king of the moutain" pose. I love their cute little prolegs (the suction ones in the back) and the little back spike.

This big boy is in his fifth instar and is a few days away from starting his cocoon.

Here he is about a day before changing into a cocoon. As you can see he is shrinking a little bit, his skin went from gray white to a creamy white and he is getting a little wrinkly. He got quite a bit shorter and then stopped eating.

This is the beginning of what I call "flossing" in which he begain stringing thick silk strands to an fro in his egg carton. As you can see he had a pretty loose frass (poop) and that will be the last time he ever poops. He also has lost a lot of length. His body got a lot thicker and the last few segments kind of absorbed up into his body.

After a whole lot of flossing he starts producing the actual silk and goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until a cocoon starts taking shape. This is the stuff that they use to make silk cloth and it is just one long thread. Below his head is far away and his prolegs are at the top most part of the cocoon.

This is kind of like ultrasound pictures to me...I don't really see the baby's foot, ankle, face, until I look at it like a 3D picture from 1994. In this one he is on his side with his front legs facing up and his back curling around the bottom.

And finally a cocoon!!!

Silkworms were by far my favorite insect this year. I had so much fun watching them grow. The kids loved them. I had to leave them before they hatched (who am I kidding they aren't going to hatch) so I left my roommate in charge. I told her to throw them away if nothing happened by August. It's only supposed to take 3 weeks...it's been about 5- maybe next time something will actually come out of the cocoons.