Brookvale Public School

The silkworm is an insect with six legs. The rest are all suckers to hang on to the leaves so that they can eat them easier. Silkworms have no sight but males have a strong sense of smell, they can smell a female silkworm from the size of a large gymnasium.

Silkworms originate from China, as that was the only material they used for clothing. To get the silk from the cocoons that the silkworms spun they put them in the oven and heated them to death, then they put it in boiling water to loosen the silk. One cocoon can give a few kilometer of silk thread!

Silkworms have no brain but they have a bunch of nerves and they rely on instinct to control their legs, head etc.

The reason that some cocoons are white and some are yellow and that some silkworms are striped and others just white is because of their genetic code, like someone has brown eyes and others blue. They can be bred to make blue, orange, red, pink, purple, green and many other colour cocoons.

A silkworm is made up of 13 segments, including the head, on each segment is a tiny hole called a spiracle, They breath through these. When silkworms are going to start spinning their cocoons they will turn yellowish and look like they are about to burst they also emit all the fluids stored up in their body, it will take them a days before it's finished.

Silkworms have a horn on the end of their tail, it is really a fake one, but the predators don't know that. They avoid eating a "painful" horn on the end of the silkworms tail. The older silkworms that didn't have the horn were eaten more then the modern ones of today. But the older ones had sharp teeth so that if they were starving they could eat the bark off the mulberry tree.

The scientific name for the silkworm is 'bombyx mori', bombyx meaning silkworm and mori meaning
black mulberry tree.

There is still a lot to know about silkworms that we haven't found out like so many things, Loch Ness, Aliens etc. But luckily, silkworms aren't from the dinosaur age, or from planet Mars so we have the safety of the silkworm lab to study them, we'll eventually find out.

Here are some internet sites by Marko:

http://www.surnames.org/cucs2.htm
http://www.animal.uq.edu.au/staff/jgd/silk_and_silkworm_production.htm
http://www.pclaunch.com/~kayton/Here are some internet sites:

Silkworms are caterpillars and they are come from China.

A lady silkworm can lays more than 300 eggs which is why it's possible to make so much clothing out of silk. The silkworm makes a cocoon which is how we get silk.

Silkworms are not cold-blooded, the only warm-blooded animals are mammals and birds. If on a cold winters day, the cold-blooded animal's temperature is about 40 degrees F, on a hot day, it is about 90 degrees F.

The Latin word for silkworm is 'bombyx mori'. Bombyx stands for silkworm, mori stands for black mulberry tree.

Silkworms' brains are too small to be called brain, they operates on instinct. The silkworm's body has into 13 segments, plus the head. A male silkworm can smell a female silkworm at the opposite end of a large gymnasium.