Silk
Silk moths lay eggs on specially prepared paper. The eggs hatch and the caterpillars (silkworms) are fed fresh mulberry leaves. After about 35 days and 4 moltings, the caterpillars are 10,000 times heavier than when hatched and are ready to begin spinning a cocoon. A straw frame is placed over the tray of caterpillars, and each caterpillar begins spinning a cocoon by moving its head in a pattern. Two glands produce liquid silk and force it through openings in the head called spinnerets. Liquid silk is coated in sericin, a water-soluble protective gum, and solidifies on contact with the air. Within 2–3 days, the caterpillar spins about 1 mile of filament and is completely encased in a cocoon. The silk farmers then heat the cocoons to kill them, leaving some to metamorphose into moths to breed the next generation of caterpillars. Harvested cocoons are then soaked in boiling water to soften the sericin holding the silk fibers together in a cocoon shape. The fibers are then unwound to produce a continuous thread. Since a single thread is too fine and fragile for commercial use, anywhere from three to ten strands are spun together to form a single thread of silk.
Silky pocket mouse
The silky pocket mouse is mainly nocturnal and lives in a burrow by day. In warmer weather it consumes cached food in the afternoon before emerging on the surface to forage in the evening. It mostly collects grass and weed seeds but also eats some green leafy material. It takes the husks off the seeds before storing them in its cheek pouches and carrying them back to its burrow where they are cached. A silky pocket mouse collects an average of of seed on each sortie. When a pile of was deposited near a burrow (sufficient for maintenance for up to 10 days), the pocket mouse collected and stored it all in one night, and still emerged to forage on succeeding nights. In cold weather it occasionally forages by day, and in really bad weather it may not come out of the burrow for several days.