Silk

📖 In short

Silk is a soft, shiny, beautiful cloth called “the queen of fibers”. The amazing thing is that it doesn't come from a plant or a factory, but from a little worm called the silkworm, which spins a cocoon of very fine thread around itself.

🤩 Did you know?

According to a Chinese legend, silk was discovered around 2700 BC.
Silk loses about 25% of its weight when it's boiled and cleaned.
Spiders make silk threads too, but people can't farm them like silkworms.
A small piece of silk cloth needs hundreds of cocoons.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 The silkworm

The silkworm is the caterpillar of a moth, and eats only mulberry leaves. When it's grown, it makes a fine thread from its mouth and wraps it around itself to make a cocoon.

🔍 From cocoon to cloth

People put the cocoons in hot water to soften the thread, then carefully unwind it, gather many threads together, spin them and weave them into cloth.

💡 China's secret

The Chinese discovered how to make silk about five thousand years ago and kept the secret for thousands of years. Caravans carried silk to faraway lands along a long road called “the Silk Road”.