Silkworm 4th instar

A 4th stage instar silk moth caterpillar. Here it feeds on it's food of choice, morus alba (white mulberry) leaves. In it's life a single caterpillar consumes about 1,5kg of morus leaves. At the farm there is an orchard growing morus trees, providing leaves for the caterpillars.

These silk worm caterpillars are part of a live display in the Alphonse Daudet (a French novelist) museum. The museum is mainly about the life on a farm in the Ardèche area (south east France) in the 19th century.
Growing silkworms in the south of France took off in the 16's after French soil scientist Olivier de Serres published a book about growing silk worms and morus trees. The morus tree grows well in the warm climate of southern France. Growing silkworms was an important economic activity for the area until the Pébrine disease around the year 1865 devastated the silk worm population. Biologist Louis Pasteur was send in to investigate and found a system for recognising infected moths in 1870, but the growing of silk worms never fully recovered. The farm this museum is located in was left by the Baudet family after the 1865 Pébrine disease.

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