Back to Show
Deep Look
Silkworms Spin Cocoons That Spell Their Own Doom
Season 9
Episode 7
Those precious silk garments in your closet were made by the caterpillars of a fuzzy white moth – thousands of them. Silkworms spin a cocoon with a single strand of silk up to 10 city blocks long. Humans have bred these insects into weaving machines that can no longer survive in the wild.
Support Provided By
3:44
Geckos navigate nearly any surface with an electron dance at the atomic scale.
3:22
Bird’s nest fungi look just like a tiny bird's nest. But those little eggs have no yolks.
3:36
How are frogs so amazing at catching bugs? It’s their supersoft tongue and special spit.
4:00
Mussels create byssal threads to attach themselves to rocks and each other.
4:10
Earthworms cozy up with a mate inside tubes of slime to make cocoons full of baby worms.
3:52
What keeps the boneless, jawless hagfish thriving after more than 300 million years? SLIME
5:04
Researchers use invisible lasers, ghastly wasps and more trickery to protect orange groves
4:20
As they gorge, oblique streaktail hoverflies help keep orange trees safe from disease.
3:37
Why is that yellowjacket crashing your BBQ? She’s gathering food for the nest’s larvae.
5:04
Explore the parasite Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE) and ways to help monarch butterflies.
4:14
Floating colonies of red fire ants are a risk for people wading through floodwater.