How Much Silk Comes from a Single Silkworm?
Each cocoon of a silkworm can produce a single thread of silk that is about 1,500 feet long. More than 25,000 cocoons are needed just to make a pound of silk. The Asiatic silkworm moth (Bombyx mori) has been so domesticated over the centuries that it probably doesn’t even exist in the wild anymore after having been reared in China for 4,000 years. It takes roughly ten pounds of mulberry leaves to enable silkworm caterpillars to manufacture one pound of cocoons which can then be spun into a silk thread more that’s more than 100 miles long!
