Nature and Villagers Lifestyle of Planting and Raising Mulberry Silkworm
Silk is the fiber sprayed from the mouth of silkworm, which is a moth species. Its scientific name is Bombyx mori, classified in the family Bombycidae. Caterpillars consume mulberry leaves. Silkworm is complete metamorphosis insect, divided into 4 stages including silkworm egg, silkworm, silk pupa, and silk moth.
The process of weaving silk is also exhibited, beginning from raising silkworm, drawing silk tread (from cocoons), and weaving silk cloth. Already-done silk cloth is also exhibited.
The zone also exhibits the nature of organisms which is called natural architecture, that are, hole, hive, and hollow created by various animals such as modeled holes of rats, snakes, butterfly lizards, and so on.
Burrowing Animals
Why do they burrow?
There are many kinds of animals which have burrowing behavior in order to create their inhabitancy for living, reproducing, hiding from their enemies and avoiding from unsuitable weather such as mygale, common butterfly lizard, rat, rabbit and armadillo.
What are the Animals beneath our Feet?
The common butterfly lizard is a reptile that lives in the hole about one foot deep. It usually goes out to look for food during the day. Its diet based on insects.
The rat is a mammal. It normally lives in the hole or underground, but some rats live in the trees. Mice can reproduce rapidly. Each pair of rats can have more than 1,000 pups.
The snake is a reptile. It usually hunts small animals as food. Normally, the snake does not create the nest to live but usually hiding in the rat hole. In actuality, approximately 2,700 types have been discovered. They are divided into 2 types: The poisonous snake that is approximately 400 types and the unpoisonous one that is approximately 2,300 types.
Ants are insects that live together as a society (ant, termite, bee, wasp, and hornet). They build their hive or nest separated as many rooms, as a big kingdom.
Some hives contain as many members as approximately a million.
Social hierarchy or caste is also divided according to their duty within the hive.
Currently more than 12,000 species of ants have been discovered. In Thailand, more than 700 species have been found, and about 1,000 species are expected to be found.
Body of an ant
There are 3 parts of an ant: head, alitrunk, gaster.
An ant has a social structure in their colony some of colony has more than a million of ant, currently found more than 12,000 types of ant in Thailand found about 700 types and maybe more than a thousand types.
The zone exhibits ant eggs which are cooked as a food mostly eaten by Isan people. “Khai Mod Daeng” is common known. Actually, it is an ant caterpillar preparing to be a queen ant in the next generation. There are 2 types of egg
1 Khai Phark has a small size, sour taste, and grow up to be an ant work
2 Khai Yai has a big size, human consumed as food
A termite nest is also exhibited, split in a half to show that there is a queen termite in the hallow with the duty to breed and lay eggs. Worker termites duty is taking care of their nest and seeking for food, while soldier termites duty is protecting their nest from enemies. Apart from termite there are fungus and Khon mushroom (Termitomyces fuliginosus Heim) living together in the termite hill. Villagers usually use them to cook as lsan-styled food.
Living and life cycle of Termite. Termite is social insects. They usually live together in a big group or colony in the same nest. Generally, termites dislike lights; they prefer dark and moist location. Termite population divides their duties into 3 castes as follows.
- Reproductive Caste or Mayfly consist of adults with wings both male and female. They are function of reproduction and distribution by means of flying out of the nest when environmental condition is suitable in order to pair up and throw off their wings, mate, and search for suitable place to lay eggs.
- Worker Caste or Worker Termite is small and soft white without sex nor eyes. They use whiskers to sense surroundings around them to lead the way. They do almost every duty in the nest such as harvesting food and feeding queens kings, larva, and soldiers who never harvest by themselves
- Soldier Caste has big, dark, and hard head with big molars which is adapted to be an organ similar to pliers with sharp tips to fight against enemies who come to intrude their members in the nest. Soldiers do not have wings, eyes, or sex. Some breeds adapt their head to be longer like a trunk to distill the sticky substance released or sprayed at the enemy’s body to make them immobile or cause them to dead.
Termites Empire or Colony Construction. The construction begins in suitable seasons. Mostly, it is after the rain about 2-3 times per year. Alate or winged reproductive male and female fly out of the nest in the twilight about 6:30 to 7:30 to somewhere with lights. Then, they pair up to mate, throw off their wings and pierce down in soil to build a nest where there are food source and moisture.
After adjusting soil condition as a habitat, about 2-31 days later they begin to lay a single egg. Then, increase in number until there are several thousand eggs a day. An egg hatches out as larvae and grows by sloughing off to be an adult.
The first-generation eggs hatch out as termites without wings and are sterile. A chemical called pheromone or a substance, produced from the queen’s anus for procreation of the larvae indicates the caste of each larva which will develop to be termites in different castes such as worker or soldier.
Some of the larvae will grow to be short-winged and incomplete termites which are in the reproductive period (Nymphs).
At the mating season, they grow to be a mayfly with complete long wings, flying out to mate. Some larvae grow to be Supplementary Queen and King who are function of reproduction and laying eggs, distributing population in case that the king or queen of the nest is destroyed.
