Here's some more video footage of the Free-Ride silkworms, with color commentary from the Free-Ride offspring.
Let me note here that as "pets" acquired as the elementary science classroom winds down for summer, silkworms are pretty agreeable. As long as you have a stable source of mulberry leaves and keep feeding them, they seem pretty content. Another animal in our science classroom that is looking for a summer home is a Madagascar hissing cockroach. The handout from the science teacher says he eats romaine lettuce and cat food. Talk about a hard sell!
What's the adaptive advantage of living your whole life on a mulberry tree?
Which do you prefer, food or escape?
Who knew that this would be such a scatological conversation?
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The Free-Ride offspring made it through another school year. This year, we are participating in the ritual sending-home-of-living-things from the science classroom. Instead of scoring guppies, however, we now have a little container of eggs ...
Dr. Free-Ride: I want to know about that little…
We're going on three weeks since the first of the Free-Ride silkworms made a cocoon.
So far, there have been no signs of anyone trying to get out. So we'll have to wait a while yet before we witness the miracle of life (or of silkmoths bumping bug uglies, depending on your perspective).
In the…
Last weekend, the Free-Rides visited the National Zoo in Washington, DC. Here are some of the animals we saw:
The giant panda.
Younger offspring: It eats a lot of bamboo.
Elder offspring: Would do great living in a Chinese restaurant if it had a hundred bucks.
Dr. Free-Ride: Why a hundred bucks?…
This school year, the elder Free-Ride offspring has a classroom teacher who used to be one of the elementary school's science teachers. (Owing to budget cuts, both the science teachers have "retreated" to be general purpose classroom teachers, and all the classroom teachers have to teach their own…
But but but... do they know how much bunnies poop?
Wonderful sequence of videos, Janet. Thanks!
I want a yacht too! And a bunny. One doesn't preclude the other, does it?
That was great, thanks.
We were once the summer home to a brood of silkworms.
The silkworms will, of course metamorphose and eventually emerge from their cocoons. Then comes the sad realization that silkworms have been so heavily bred for their silk that they can no longer fly -- their wings are all stunted and misshapen. Left my son a bit bummed out when he discovered that. then they die after a couple of weeks. I didn't have the heart to tell him (he was a first grader) that normally they boil the cocoons -- with the silkworms in them -- to extract the silk.