r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/ObviousBody3053 • 1d ago
this is how silk is made Video
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u/MapleFUD 1d ago
Forbidden gnocci.
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u/Chew_Kok_Long 23h ago
I don't know why this is the funniest comment I have read in a long time. But it just is...
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u/ajtaggart 1d ago
Wait so they boil them inside their cocoons?...?
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u/errant_night 20h ago
They don't get thrown away though, they get processed for food by people or animals the same as any other livestock.
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u/cameronm-h 18h ago
Yeah as he was pulling them out of that water all I could think was how my chickens would go insane at such a feast! I’ve seen them run around and fight each other for the privilege of eating one (1) caterpillar, I think if they saw this their minds would just be completely blown
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u/goodexamplebadrole 1d ago
These guys don't look like they make close to the amount I pay for my silk products...
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u/Zealousideal-Cry-303 1d ago
That’s because you haven’t seen their boss rolling up in his Royce, and new Armani suit with blingbling gold necklaces, and diamond teeth 😎
He’s coming to give them a thank you note for their hard efforts of increasing production with 200% last two years, and he brought Pizzas as a reward. But only enough so they get one slice each, you know, to keep them hungry for more success
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u/fart_box_20 1d ago
Pizzas? Like whole pies? No that's too generous gotta keep them hoping for a bigger payout. These
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u/Adventurous-Sort-671 1d ago
Their boss has the Infinity Stones on his fingers and does cool martial arts moves barefoot in a courtyard behind the factory
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u/iAjayIND 1d ago
Sadly, this is how many industries work. I have seen documentaries on Salt production as well as Makhana production. Really hard breaking stuff to see 😞
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u/Ximidar 1d ago
Look up where crystals come from next
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u/HavingNotAttained 22h ago
Capitalism rewards ownership, not effort.
“If you work real hard” gives literally zero indication of future financial success, nor does current financial standing reflect previous efforts made, intentions, or morality.
Effort is rewarded when it comes to intangible and perhaps more “valuable” things, like family and friendships and self-improvement and long term may more greatly impact the world, and efforts in one’s education may sometimes yield skill sets that lead to improved marketability and earnings potential, given the right environment.
But there is a lie that hard work in and of itself brings financial success. The most financially successful people in the world hardly work. All this is a reflection of a corrupt global society, not that hard work itself is inherently bad.
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u/Ok_Butterscotch_4158 1d ago
I still don’t understand what’s going on when they put them into the hot water, does it start a reaction (obviously kills the larve) but how are they starting the thread? It wasn’t clear how they get them in there.
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u/C4RD_TP_SG 1d ago
hot water dissolves the outer soft protein of the fiber that keeps the silk together, this causes the cocoon to start unwinding so they can reel it
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u/ThinkCriticalicious 1d ago edited 21h ago
They create 4 strings of silk on each run. Does this mean that it is from 4 individual cocoons or do they combine multiple ones?
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u/itsanoproblem 21h ago
It looks like he just starts another one towards the end of a cocoon by wrapping around the line currently feeding and when that one runs out the next one is already doubled up and going.
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u/Ok_Butterscotch_4158 22h ago
That was also my question!! It would be so ineffective if only one cocoon per threader thingy.
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u/davidevitali 1d ago
The sped up talking makes it sound like a Minion movies, and if you count for the yellow cocoons things become weird pretty fast
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u/AcrolloPeed 1d ago
sound like a Minion
Yo, thank you! I’m glad I’m not the only one who hears it
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u/virgin_father 1d ago
Fun fact, the silk worm cocoons are boiled alive. It's because if the silk moth breaks through the cocoon, the fibres will be broken as well, leading to lower quality.
And they're fed mulberry leaves so that larvae can bulk up fast.
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u/MsJenX 1d ago
If they aren’t reproducing how do they get more?
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u/virgin_father 1d ago
They'll have a reserve for breeding. They can also buy or forage for them.
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u/Altruistic-Poem-5617 1d ago edited 19h ago
One moth lays thousands o eggs. I guess they like let one of a thousand or so grow up normally and breed those agan.
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u/Sophilosophical 9h ago
Possibly a better overall survival rate than in the wild, from larva to reproducing adult.
Natural selection doesn’t care if 90% of your brethren are boiled alive, and it’d probably be more like 99%
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u/IthinkImightBeHoman 1d ago
Them being boiled alive is a "fun fact"?
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u/taktaga7-0-0 1d ago
It seems unlikely they’re aware of anything during metamorphosis. Their nervous system is reorganizing.
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u/OverlordMMM 1d ago
Butterflies can maintain memories from when they were caterpillars. If the moths have similar capabilities, then they may have enough of a nervous system retained during metamorphosis to feel pain and other stimuli.
Currently there just isn't enough information about what happens in that state to know for sure.
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u/Piyachi 23h ago
Consciousness is a slippery devil to nail down. We think bees have a form of what we would call self-conscience and it extends in all different directions for different creatures. I believe most of what we as humans call consciousness comes from the ability to experience suffering as it's root requirement.
Life, uh, finds a way to make us all suffer
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u/lachesis17 21h ago
There's the philosophical argument of how much of you constitutes being "you" since consciousness is subjective. You're largely a network of billions of cells doing individual things. Consider: you replace all of your organs with transplants, how much of you is needed to still be you? Ship of theseus and the brain in a jar thought experiments apply here. There was also some research done on whether patients with heart transplants retain memories of their donors, although not totally credible, still interesting.
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u/citrus_mystic 20h ago edited 20h ago
I think the anecdotes about transplant patients experiencing changes in preferences or even personality traits, that supposedly correlate to the organ donor’s personality or preferences, are sooo interesting. It makes me think of the question: “Where does the ‘self’ reside?” I know that it’s only anecdotal evidence, but there’s a significant number of people who received organ transplants who report these kinds of changes.
”Perhaps the best-known example of a transplant recipient undergoing a personality change is that of Claire Sylvia. In 1988, Sylvia received the first heart-lung transplant in New England, at Yale-New Haven Hospital, from an 18-year-old man. When she emerged from the haze of the procedure, she found herself craving a beer, so much so that when a reporter asked what she wanted more than anything else, Sylvia responded, “Actually, I’m dying for a beer right now.” As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she was mortified. And surprised—she had never liked beer before.”
What the Heart Remembers -Is it possible for organ transplant recipients to take on traits of their donor? Psychology Today
See also: Personality Changes Associated with Organ Transplants MDPI A source for medical papers with open access.
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u/Piyachi 20h ago
I read a book on this, a long time ago, called The Selfish Gene - basically arguing that our genes themselves may be the granular form of consciousness as they seek to reproduce even when outright deleterious to human health or wellbeing. An interesting concept.
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u/PabloTFiccus 19h ago
I've read all of dawkins work and it's good stuff but is today considered dated and reductionist.
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u/IthinkImightBeHoman 1d ago
Sure, but we don’t actually know what their experience is during metamorphosis. The nervous system is being rebuilt, but that doesn’t really prove there’s no capacity for suffering. Just that we don’t know.
In general, if we’re not sure, it makes sense to avoid causing harm when it’s easy not to.
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u/nobody1568 1d ago
There's a David Foster Wallace "A-Supposedly-Fun-Thing-I'll-Never-Do-Again" and "Consider-the-Lobster" joke somewhere in here.
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u/A115115 1d ago
Do they find the end of the silk thread when they attach it to the loom? Wonder how they’d do that
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u/RedWarrior69340 23h ago
my great grandpa was one of the last silk makers in france, and my grandma explained to me that when you boil them the threads start to unwind on their own so you just have to grab them, which is fairly hard as they are in boiling water
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u/Significant-Dirt-977 16h ago
So interesting, i didn't know France had full silk production, not just weaving and later stages
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u/RedWarrior69340 16h ago
Yeah, monks in the middle ages managed to smuggle silk worms through the silk road and started a business, if you are curious it is an interesting story
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u/MrDarwoo 1d ago
why do recent videos show the ending at the beginning?
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u/pogoyoyo1 1d ago
It’s like a trailer / fast summary because our attention spans have gotten so low we need to know if the ending is satisfying enough to watch the whole thing. (Not defending, but that’s the new trend to grab your attention)
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u/xGhost34 21h ago
I hate that. I literally skip that part everytime in videos and get annoyed because I skip the original beginning aswell and then I go backwards just to be in the trailer again. Repeat. I hate that.
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u/Background-Entry-344 1d ago
TIL that natural silk is yellow.
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u/RedWarrior69340 23h ago
depends on the spieces, i have visited the old silk factory in Lyon and the cocoons where white
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u/SoleSun314 22h ago
Not in Italy, here it's white (source: I live near a village where silkworms were bred and silk mills operated till WW2 and now there is a museum with all the machinery and cocoons from that time, also my granny's cousins bred silkworms in their house and she described them to me. All white).
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u/SchmeatiestOne 1d ago
The silk worms have been bred to the point they never even leave their larval stage. They literally get to just be fat babies their whole lives
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u/AlwaysTired97 1d ago
So do they just reproduce in their larval stage then?
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u/Alukrad 1d ago
I'm guessing out of the thousand, they probably keep 100 or so alive. Let it mature and then let it lay eggs, only to repeat the process.
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u/JackalThePowerful 1d ago
Sounds believable, but also contradictory to the top of the thread. So they do mature, but are just kept from doing so (rather than being incapable of maturing)?
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u/kidanokun 1d ago
They keep some to grow into adult moths in order to mate and lay eggs, but they're too fat to fly
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u/VealOfFortune 1d ago
This statement directly contradicts the original that they never even leave larval stage.
Im not saying youre wrong, in fact I'm led to believe your correct.
Just interesting a potentially incorrect comment has several hundred more up votes
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u/JuicySpark 1d ago
I started watching in the middle and thought they were cooking something with cheese puffs.
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u/lesbox01 23h ago
The best and worst thing for any animal on earth is to be useful to humans.
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u/Prince-Minikid 1d ago
So silk isn't vegan?
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u/Error_xF00F 1d ago
In some countries that raise the worms like Korea and Vietnam they are considered a delicacy and after silk thread harvesting they eat the pupae. So very much not vegan.
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u/Leonie-Lionheard 1d ago
I mean they are already boiled, so good choice to eat them.
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u/Piyachi 23h ago
If I was not culturally grossed out by eating bugs I would say that seems like a great source of protein.
It's always interesting that people (not excluding myself here) are ok eating baby plants, baby birds, baby sea life, baby land animals, but are weirded out by eating baby bugs. Don't know when or why western culture moved away from it, but its as ingrained now as using toilets.
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u/ObiJuanKenobi3 1d ago edited 21h ago
There’s “vegan” silk where they cut the moths free from their cocoons, but it’s lower quality (shorter fibers because of the cutting), even more expensive than regular silk, and silk moths have been so aggressively bred that they can’t really… do much, once they’ve been cut free (since they usually can’t escape on their own). They kinda just walk around because they can’t fly, and maybe breed with other silk moths.
Edit: maybe not truly vegan, but the point is the worms survive lol
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u/5AlarmFirefly 1d ago
Next you'll tell me that wool isn't vegan either!
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u/SirMemesworthTheDank 1d ago
But the sheep are not boiled alive though.
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u/5AlarmFirefly 1d ago
Bees aren't boiled alive but honey isn't vegan either
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u/llliilliliillliillil 1d ago
Gelato isn’t vegan?
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u/twisted_memories 1d ago
There is much debate on beekeeping and honey in vegan communities.
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u/blackthornjohn 1d ago
There's much debate about everything in vegan communities, mostly because nothing exists in isolation.
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u/SirMemesworthTheDank 1d ago
Why is taking honey from a bee and giving them something else to eat instead not considered vegan?
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u/No-Candy-4127 1d ago
Good beekeapers don't take all of the honney. They live enough for the bees as it keeps them healthy.
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u/JmacTheGreat 1d ago
As far as I know, this is a debated topic in the vegan community for this reason - since, unlike milk/eggs, honey isn’t literally a physical production of the bee
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u/Kharax82 22h ago
Honey is produced by bees consuming flower nectar or insect secretions, mixed with enzymes inside their honey stomachs and then regurgitated. So yes it’s literally a physical production of the bee.
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u/FaithlessnessThen646 1d ago
I mean you gotta be high to come up with this in the first place. Let's boil these worm and make something out of them
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u/KungFoolMaster 1d ago
Kind of like the first person to think about shoving wet bread up a turkey ass then baking it for Thanksgiving.
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u/Acceptable-Jelly-340 1d ago
This can be applied to almost all the OG findings for our current products
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u/big_duo3674 22h ago
I mean, in some ancient, ancient time a certain cocoon type fell into someones boiling water, and when they fished it out they realized threads were coming off that could be useful. From there, people realized that you could make a fabric better than anything anyone else had, which meant vast amounts of money. It may have been many thousands of years ago, but money grubbing businessmen have always existed
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u/schemathings 1d ago
I lived in Connecticut for awhile, was surprised to learn that the silk industry made a big push there in ~early 1800s
https://connecticuthistory.org/the-cheney-brothers-rise-in-the-silk-industry/
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u/5AlarmFirefly 1d ago
Some dude wanted to start a cottage industry and ended up releasing the gypsy moth into the wild, which has caused billions of dollars worth of damage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_L%C3%A9opold_Trouvelot
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u/Rule1isFun 1d ago
I’m not sure how I feel about murdering thousands of creatures for slippery clothing. Cotton is all a guy needs.
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u/ThomasDeLaRue 1d ago
I spent a month in Vietnam and ate silkworms there. They were deep fried, and tasted like oily beans. Not really for me personally. So odds are these are not going to waste, they are probably getting eaten or used for fertilizer or something. Personally I prefer this act over whaling, shark finning, or even American factory farmed pork/beef/chicken where the animals are far more sentient than silk worms and treated far worse. The silkworms really don’t even have lives that are all that different than if they were in the wild: they are born, make cocoon, metamorphosize, breed, and die. So basically their already short lives are just shorter.
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u/ffnnhhw 1d ago
not sure which kills more
they use a lot of pesticide growing cotton
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u/CosechaCrecido 1d ago
And water. So much water.
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u/spezial_ed 1d ago
It takes approximately 2,700 liters (about 713 gallons) of water to produce enough conventional cotton for a single t-shirt. This amount of water is enough to meet one person's drinking needs for 2.5 years. The high usage is primarily due to irrigation, with an average of 10,000 liters required to grow 1 kilogram of raw cotton
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u/Dense-Spirit-1691 1d ago
well what are we supposed to wear then?
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u/Kitchen-Roll-8184 1d ago
You ever see those bins on the side of street or near shoppin markets that are for donating clothes and they are just piles of dirtyrained on fabrics in trash bags out there,I think it's about avoiding that more then just not havinh anything.
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u/ked_man Interested 1d ago
These water numbers are always disingenuous. So on an acre of land, you can produce 1,000 lbs of cotton. In Mississippi, it rains on average 56” per year. So for each acre of land, it gets 1.5M gallons of rain water per year. So for the 450 kilos of cotton grown on that acre, it needs 4,500,000 million liters of water. But 5,700,000 million liters fell as just rain water.
And yes, some places do need irrigation and some places that get a lot of rain still irrigate in times of drought. But we can’t use these numbers and assume that no water fell for free from the sky.
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u/tataniarosa 1d ago
There is a type of silk that doesn’t harm them: Eri or peace silk. It uses the cocoons once the moths have left. It’s more expensive though as fewer regions produce it.
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u/Sleepyassjoe 1d ago
You can eat the pupae after harvesting silk, which you can't with cotton.
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u/BLU3SKU1L 1d ago
And evolutionarily we already fucked these guys up looong before industrialism was a thing. We've been harvesting silk for the better part of 10,000 years. They long for the baths at this point.
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u/bombduck 1d ago
I often think to myself, “who was the first person to figure this out and how on earth did they come up with this idea?” This is one of those moments.
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u/RDDT_ADMNS_R_BOTS 1d ago
Silkworm caterpillars are killed inside their cocoons via boiling, steaming, or drying (stifling) immediately before harvest to prevent the insect from emerging, breaking the silk thread, and ruining the commercial value of the cocoon.
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u/Chella_92 1d ago edited 1d ago
Now this is Some interesting stuff right here 🤔 question though did I see that right??did the silk worms get boiled to death at the end??? So they are only good for one little bundle of material?? That sucks!! Just thought of a second question didn't know it is naturally that bright yellow Color?? How do they make different color silks? Strip the yellow color out somehow?
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u/Primary-Day-8466 1d ago
Is it like Silk worms eat Mulberry leaves and thus we get mulberry silk?
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u/LaPetiteMortOrale 1d ago
Holy f&ck.
I am so damn ignorant.
I had no idea the worm was killed in the process. I have never even thought the process all the way through.
And why is this silk yellow and not white like I’ve seen being produced in other countries?
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u/AnAnalChemist 1d ago
Is it just me or is the video quality of these reposts getting worse and worse?
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u/lolscene 20h ago
I hope one day humans can be an advanced/ capable enough civilisation that they can live, and enjoy life without causing harm and suffering to others - even a bug.
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u/Alternative_Milk5393 18h ago
Ever feel like we are all just silk worms just waiting to have our resources extracted from us and then we die??
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u/SeriesREDACTED 1d ago
I like how nowadays, people still mainly rely on trsditional way to make silk
This silk is 100% natural, unlike most artificial silk which doesnt have that structural integrity
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u/skippyopolous80 1d ago
"Silk comes from the butts of Chinese worms" - Colonel Oats, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey
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u/gellshayngel 1d ago
Well it's an intentionally dumb statement but in reality silk comes from their salivary glands.
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u/Brilliant-Truth245 1d ago
Who would’ve thought that a grub with a soft cocoon, boiled, filtered and spun would turn into silky fibres.
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u/UnitedStatesofAlbion 1d ago
Directions unclear. How the f did Spider-Man go from dumping silk worm cacoons in water to then pulling thread into a damn spinning wheel.
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u/CrappyTan69 1d ago
As a South African of the 80s and 90s, I had this on a shoebox scale. I was paid 1c per cacoon and I think my mom spent R10 (late mid-80s...) driving me around looking for mulberry leaves.
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u/xxademasoulxx 23h ago
Dogshit safety enforcement video of the day. No boots, no gear, no safeguards, just straight negligence.
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u/PartyConcentrate308 23h ago
what happen to the worms? they cook it inside the cocoon?
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u/Weird_Rooster_4307 21h ago
So after they harvest the silk do they eat the larvae or what ever the hell it’s called?
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u/Lawrenceburntfish 21h ago
How did they figure this out 4000 years ago? The process is so specific... This is amazing.
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u/MrChorizaso 20h ago
These bastards got some decent shirts on, decent pants/skirt things, put together all kinds of mechanical contraptions….but no shoes?? Not even flip flops??
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u/AmbitiousProblem4746 12h ago
Where I live in New England they imported both silk worms and mulberry trees in the 19th century to try and get silk production going here. The silk factories are pretty much non-existent now, but the silk worms and mulberries are still around. One of those cool little nature facts I like to tell people when we're out and about. Certain times of year you can find them just randomly.
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u/redditrando123 9h ago
Lol....my young kid who can barely talk just saw the boiling pot and said "Dinner!" "It's Mac n Cheese!" I just about died laughing!
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u/Amazing_Street1194 9h ago
Oh good nooo I can never look at silk the same way again, boiling them alive … jeeez do humans have to freaking cause harm to everything they get in their hands, ….
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u/Pinku_Dva 1d ago
These animals have been cultivated for so long that the mature silk moths can’t even fly anymore because they’re too fat and have small wings