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First Aired - 08/30/2010 12:00PM
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This week on The Naturalist Bernie sits down with Alex Bolesta, Ariana Rickard, Chin-Li Yan, and Pierre Bull for a discussion on silk and the incredible creatures that make them: silk worms. The secret of silk's origin was kept secret for literally thousands of years, and not without purpose, for silk is stronger and tougher than tensile steel, and a piece of silk the size of a pencil could hold a 747. Tune in for a group discussion on how a tiny little worm can build fortunes and yet is still kept as pets in China. This episode was sponsored by Fairway: like no other market.
Photos: Silkworms in their various stages
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Silkworm Silk (17:29)
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Ariana Rickaio, Silkworm Nursery at the AMNH, Alex Bolesta, Chin-Li Yan raises silkworms, The Silk Road, live silk worms at the exhibit, a silk worm is not a worm but an insect, native to Asia, spins a cocoon of very fine and strong silk, the tiny point protects the heart, some people say silk worms are blind, lots of kids in China grow silk worms as pets and buy them in the grocery store, you also need mulberry leaves, a park ranger at Inwood Hill said a hundred years ago NYC tried to import lots of silk worms and mulberry trees from Asia but grew them outside instead of indoors and they died, but now we have a lot of mulberry trees in Inwood, the pioneers in Utah were encouraged to plant mulberry trees and silk worms to be self-sufficient, the Mormons are very industrious, most common color of cocoons are white, first life stage of worm is egg where the larvae develop, they stay inside the cocoon as a pupae, when the silkworms hatch out you can barely even see them, they multiply their weight ten thousand times in ten weeks, their silk glands are modified salivary glands, they move their head in a figure eight pattern to get the liquid silk out, when the liquid comes into contact with air it turns to silk, gravitiy pulls the silk out not Spiderman Style, stronger than steel, there is a difference between cocoons and moths, there are a lot of Taiwanese legends about Silk Worms, Shi Ling Tsu, a catholic priest brought a catholic priest into Europe and broke the thousand year old secret of silk, 5,000 year old industry, Whole Foods Market,Spider Silk (25:23)
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Spider silk, Golden Silk Orb Weaver, they use the silk to make webs rather than cocoon, spider silk is 2x stronger than silk worm silk and the same strength as tensile steel, strength is a measure of how much stress the material can take before breaking, toughness refers to the amount of energy a material can absord before breaking, both types of silk consist of protein chains, small chemical differences between the two account for color, the strenght comes from the physical difference between the two (the way the proteins link together etc), theres a lot of interest in using spider silk in the biomedical field and defense technology (bullet proof vests!), there have been attempts in the past to bring back classic silk making, there is an 11ft by 4ft tapestry made entirely of Golden Orb Weaver Silk, 1 million spiders made the tapestry, they were caught in the wild, chandedlier made of silk worm cocoons, 12,000 cocoons arranged around lights, the length of the strand depends on how much they have been eating, ten cocoons unraveled would be higher than Mt. Everest, it takes pounds and pounds of cocoons to make silk, it takes 630 cocoons to make a silk shirt, they unravel the cocoons then weave them, the weaving is mechanical, lots of website provide information about raising silk worms and selling them, Silk Worm Naming Project, naming silk worms after your friends on facebook, silk worm joke!, silk is used for surgery, spider silk the thickness of a pencil could hold up a 747 jet,To comment on this episode click here. There are currently Comments
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History of Wine Along the Silk Road with Peter Cousins, wine geneticist at Cornell University.
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Growing Ancient Silk Road Wine in NY State with Fred Frank, president of the Dr. Frank's Vinifera Wine Cellars.
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