These puffy white balls are silkworm cocoons. Inside are a male and female silkworm who have been spinning this cocoon for about 10 days. Now we come to the mind-boggling part. Each cocoon contains about 3,000 feet of silk thread. In the silk factory we visited in Suzhou (southern China) workers boil the cocoons to loosen a single thread. They gather together single threads from 8 cocoons and spin them together to make an 8-strand silk thread. You need 3,000 cocoons to make a pound of silk. Silkworms are considered domesticated because they can no longer fly. Only a few silkworms are allowed to grow to be moths so that reproduction can occur and the cycle can start all over again. More pictures to follow.
These puffy white balls are silkworm cocoons. Inside are a male and female silkworm who have been spinning this cocoon for about 10 days. Now we come to the mind-boggling part. Each cocoon contains about 3,000 feet of silk thread. In the silk factory we visited in Suzhou (southern China) workers boil the cocoons to loosen a single thread. They gather together single threads from 8 cocoons and spin them together to make an 8-strand silk thread. You need 3,000 cocoons to make a pound of silk. Silkworms are considered domesticated because they can no longer fly. Only a few silkworms are allowed to grow to be moths so that reproduction can occur and the cycle can start all over again. More pictures to follow. 
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