Obviously, I didn't get it because my
organs recognize how magnificent I am. I got it because I'm freaking
stupid.
About two years ago, on a warm summer
evening, I was playing with a foam Nerf football, throwing it in the
air and catching it, much like children a decade or more younger than
I might. But I was sixteen or so, so I had to make it the most
mind-blowingly extreme game ever conceived in the history of the
planet.
My game became "How Far Can I
Throw this Ball and Still Catch It?". It turns out, I could
throw the ball about fifteen yards, stumble on a hill covered in
shale (that's a geological term for "rocks that might as well be
shards of glass and hatred") and fall on said hill, all while
somehow maintaining a grip on the ball.
As I said, I caught that toy, but I
also got a pretty large scrape across my stomach, which bled a
tremendous amount. It hurt pretty badly.
I do some pretty stupid things that
result in scars and a large amount of pain to myself, but I'm pretty
sure the life of a Bombyx mori, known primarily as a silkworm, sucks
a lot more.
After suffocating in an itty bitty egg
for two weeks, the larvae of these wretched creatures emerge to a
hunger that literally cannot be satisfied. This is unfortunate for a
couple reasons. One, hunger sucks, and two, they only subsist on
mulberry, and if they're not provided with a tree or leaf or any
piece of mulberry, they will die.
And that's another thing: these suckers depend not on the teachings of its moth-parents, but on the malicious hands of the humans who created them in the first place. That's right, these things only exist because a bunch of balding guys in labs said, “Oh, hey, can we create something for the sole purpose of interesting torture?” It turns out, they can and did, and the people who farm silkworms now are responsible for continuing their poor pets' lives.
There's a natural breed of silkworm
(Bombyx mandarina), but through cross-breeding, hybridization and a
whole lotta insect incest, the cultured species we have today was
created. The obvious benefit is the silk we harvest, whereas the
downsides are complete dependence of an objectively pointless species
and millions of little buggy corpses.
So we know that domesticated silkworms
can't do crap without humans breathing down their necks, and we know
that as soon as they hatch, they're eating. Sounds like a pretty
good life, being nurtured immediately after hatching, then getting to
gorge on tasty plant life. And in the end, they even transform into
moths, so that's cool.
Oh, wait. No they don't.
Silkworms, in order to grow properly to
become moths have to molt four times. In this process, they shed
what serves as their skin and use a heck of a lot of energy to do it,
hence the eating. Soon, they become ready to form a cocoon and
undergo their metamorphosis to become a wondrous moth.
Oh, wait. They still don't.
Once silkworms are ready to become a
moth, they begin to drool. But it's a super-mystical, magical drool,
one that no one else in all the land can do. It's stringy and fuzzy,
and it wraps around the creature's entire body in a thread that can
be well over a thousand feet long (that's about 300 meters).
And when this is done, it's time for
the human breeders to interfere!
Carefully, humans will place the
cocoons together, send them to a factory, then BOIL THEM ALL ALIVE.
From here, the silken cocoons are stripped of the worms and the worms
are unceremoniously thrown away.
The silk then makes fantastic clothing
and fabric options, but the silkworm dies. It dies for us, the
selfish, farming humans. It suffers, from its great egg escape to
its death by boiling, for almost a full month, probably knowing
exactly what is in store.
It's like the stinging pain of falling
on rock shards, except it's for thirty days. It's a tortured life,
the life of a Bombyx mori, but until the Great Insect Rebellion, we
will still have our neckties and dresses.
amazon.com
This killed
many silkworms. I'm sure
you're happy.
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