The Story of Silk

My interest in silk dates from 1990. Since then I have bred my own silkworms and found something of interest about silk in all five continents. It all began 400 million years ago when ancestors of spiders crawled out of the sea onto dry land and used silk to prevent their eggs from drying out and make trap lines to detect prey. Many animals make silk: among them spiders reign supreme, but the silk industry depends on a moth, Bombyx mori, that has been bred in captivity over thousands of yea...