h a l f b a k e r y"This may be bollocks, but it's lovely bollocks."
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There is currently a plague of clothes moths in Britain. I
have no idea why, maybe they ate all the bees or
something.
Clothes moth caterpillars eat wool and spin silk.The
former
makes them pests, the latter makes them useful. Why
not
take old wool which can no longer be used to make
garments and feed it to clothes moth caterpillars? They
apparently spin silken galleries from which they eat the
wool, then spin cocoons. It seems to me that this could
fairly easily be harvested, thereby effectively recycling
old
wool into new silk. For a cruelty-free approach, wait
until
the cocoons have hatched out, as with silkworms this
reduces the quality by shortening the fibres, but not to
the
extent that they become unusable.
[link]
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Based on wikipedia, it looks like most "wild" silk is of considerably lower quality and possibly poorer properties than silk worm silk. |
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[+] can we teach them to eat polyester? |
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It's probably poorer in quality but it won't be as difficult to use as spider silk, on the whole. |
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[FT], i have had that very thought and i think the answer is tiny robots. |
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If only we could spray hormones into the air or something, that would train them to repair the holes with their own silk! |
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Hmm, maybe there's a way of training spiders to hunt the caterpillars and then spin dense webs over the holes. The trouble is, hunting spiders and web-spinning spiders probably produce very different silk. |
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OCD spiders that live in your drawers and patch up your clothing. |
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[+] although there's doubtless some dull practical
reason why this can't work. |
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[pocmloc] you mean pheromones? And unless you
get rid of that extraneous comma, the answer is
going to be: "but we already do." |
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Yes, i also think pheromones. |
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Clothes moth caterpillars presumable secrete enzymes which digest keratin, or maybe they have symbiotic microbes or something. In any case, this presumably means hair, wool and horn can be broken down into amino acids or at least smaller peptides, which means it might be possible to convert it to edible form. |
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The pheremone traps for clothes moths are very good. They have a surface which is irresistible to (I think) male clothes moths and which is also very sticky. They're expensive though, so I would prefer to have a pitcher plant genetically engineered to secrete clothes moth pheremones. |
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Apply the same principle to hair weaves. |
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Yes. Also, convert lumps of hair in hairbrushes et caetera to silk. |
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+ I need some of these for my attic where I have stored vintage clothing improperly! If I had only known what an appetite they have! Holy moley! |
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There's a fly which eats them and flea larvae. |
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I would prefer to see this happening *while* someone is wearing the wool item in question. I imagine someone wearing a wool sweater that is covered with thousands of caterpillars --- they leave the house in the morning wearing their wool outfit, and come home at night in silk. Bun for the bizarre thought... [+] |
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[Xandram], could you use a vacuum packing system to deal with that? Or fill your attic with nitrogen? |
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