Adopt Worms ( Engineering and Biomimetics)

Week 2: Background research and shedding skin as a natural habit of the pet

The scientific name of bread worm is actually meal worms. Meal worms is very different to earthworms. This is because, meal worms is not really a worm. It is a premature stage of a darkling beetle. Like all other holometabolic insects, they pass through 4 stages of life; egg, larva, pupa and adult. Meal worms are like caterpillar stage and the darkling beetle (Tenebrio molitor) is like the butterfly stage. The below is the picture of an adult meal worm;

After a week of rearing the bread worms, the most significant activity that was observed was the shedding skin of the worms. As the worm grows, it sheds its skin just like snakes. The skin of the worms does not grow on their body, like human. It is more of a protective layer that surrounds the worm. Furthermore, the skin of the worm is an exoskeleton which hardens when formed and could not be stretched a lot. This is why the worms needs to shed its skin when the size of the worms increases or decreases. The frequency of worms shedding its skin is very dependent at the environment effects such as, temperature, humidity, and protein intake.

Since the worms are very abundant in protein, the skins could easily be rebuilt.

In engineering perspective, the ideas of the skin shedding could be used as a cheap way to maintain an appearance of an object. For example, a layer of chemicals which is almost invisible could be sprayed on the surface of an object. But the layer must be able to protect the objects from incoming pressures. From time to time, when the layer of the surface wears off or full with scratches, the layer could be removed easily, maybe with some solvent or manually. =)

The next habit of the meal worms that could be observe is the worms like to chew on newspapers. It is very surprising as the food stock (bread) is always more than enough. This habit could be the next behavior that can be studied in this 10 weeks period. That's all for this week.

Thank you

--Fun fact: Meal worms are often raised as pet food for lizards, fish and birds---