Silkworm Gut

Silkworm Gut

Khilendra Basnyat

The silkworm is an insect which is able to do something that not other insect can do. It can spin cocoons of silk for human beings to wear.

Silkworms were discovered in ancient china, where it fed on mulberry trees. Since then, they have been carried from one continent to another. Wherever they go , they had to have mulberry trees . Till now, they have never changed their eating habits.

Although mulberry trees can live without silkworms, the latter can not thrive or make good silk without the leaves of the latter. In some countries, many persons are rearing silkworms to turn the fat little cocoons into shimmering fabrics.

In the past, fishermen used to tie their baited hooks to their fishing lines with a special cord known as leader. For about a century, the best leaders have been made from the glands of the silkworm, known as silkworm gut, which is thin, tough and nearly invisible in water. For many years, surgeons used it as a thread to sew up wounds because it holds the cuts together until they are healed.

In order to use their glands, silkworms have to be killed before they have a chance to spin. It is not possible to get both silk and gut from the same silkworms. This is why some of the families of Murcia province in Spain started keeping silkworms for gut rather than for cocoons. Murcia has long been a world center for the production of fine silkworm gut.

Nowadays nylon has replaced silkworm gut. Surgeons use nylon threat to sew up wounds. Fisherman also use nylon thread on their fishing lines because its length can be used according to necessity. But gut cannot be used according to necessity because it is only as long as the gland of a single silkworm and not uniformly thick. Despite this, on the end of a fishing line in icy water, gut sinks more easily than nylon thread below the surface of water. This is why some fisherman still prefer gut to nylon.