Cocoon-less silkworm pupae

[Whatcamo]

Check this out cleaning through the spun cocoons pulling them out of the feeding bin today and I guess these guys where to lazy to spin they are still alive and kinda do a jumping been move if you touch them anyone else ever seen this?

 

[Miss Lily]

Cool! I have only seen one do that once before, but I also have one in this latest lot that spun itself a silk bubble and started to pupate like yours have! It has one layer of silk around it, that's all! It's so strange how they go really short and fat and then shrink and go brown! So much for not disturbing them as they only produce enough silk to spin one cocoon! Maybe some just can't be bothered or don't produce silk at all? They are such fascinating things! How long did the moths take to emerge?

 

[JonRich]

who needs silk sheets anyway..thats cool looking

 

[Whatcamo]

Cool! I have only seen one do that once before, but I also have one in this latest lot that spun itself a silk bubble and started to pupate like yours have! It has one layer of silk around it, that's all! It's so strange how they go really short and fat and then shrink and go brown! So much for not disturbing them as they only produce enough silk to spin one cocoon! Maybe some just can't be bothered or don't produce silk at all? They are such fascinating things! How long did the moths take to emerge?

They took about 2 weeks to emerge

who needs silk sheets anyway..thats cool looking

Yeah haha be much less mess when I had 150+ decide it was time to spin in one night

 

[Miss Lily]

150?!?! I thought I had a lot of cocoons! I have 40, which is probably more than enough for 2 chameleons' worth of silkworms! Thanks, I might only have a week to wait now then! I gave the first 4 to my friend at the weekend as they had been spun long enough to move them.

 

[Whatcamo]

Well in total it's more like 300+ cocoons lol

 

[pssh]

As long as they are not deformed, they should hatch just fine. Even deformed ones will hatch sometimes. isn't it neat to see them? They look kinds like little aliens.

 

[Whatcamo]

Yeah they all look great just lacking of cocoon!
I actually found a lot more I guess a bunch of the worms decided to not spin and just crawl in the mess the 150 worms that all spun at the same time made and save the work!! Lol

 

[Waylah]

Reviving an old thread here, but just like to add - I noticed one of my silkworms looking ready to cocoon, but after a day hadn't made any silk. I watched it closely and saw it was moving its head in the usual way to lay down silk, but nothing was coming out. I thought it was going to die until I found this thread. Maybe it will just go ahead and pupate without being in a cocoon; I have it set aside in a separate container to see what happens.
So, maybe these ones that didn't make a silk cocoon had some defect that didn't let them produce silk, even if they tried.

 

[Firewallx]

I just had one pupate last night without a cocoon. It did put down silk all around the edges of the container, sticking the towel paper to the bottom of the container. It then crawled under the paper. I thought it was dead until I saw, under magnification, its heartbeat and that it was twitching like Swallowtails do just before pupating.

 

[Chameleomom]

@Firewallx this thread is from 2012

 

[Firewallx]

@Chameleomom; It still came up when I searched the web.