Ch 3 focuses on animal fibres — wool and silk. Students learn how wool is obtained from sheep (shearing, scouring, sorting) and silk from silkworms (sericulture), including the silk moth life cycle.
Wool comes from the hair of sheep, goats, yaks, and camels. Process: shearing (removing fleece) → scouring (washing) → sorting by quality → removing burrs → dyeing → spinning into yarn. Selective breeding produces sheep with thick fleece.
Silk is obtained from the cocoon of the silk moth (Bombyx mori). Sericulture: rearing silkworms on mulberry leaves. Caterpillar spins a cocoon of silk fibre. Cocoons are boiled to kill the pupa and unwind the silk thread (reeling). One cocoon can yield 1000+ metres of thread.
Download: https://ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/gesc103.pdf | Complete book: https://ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/gesc1ps.zip
Egg → Larva (silkworm/caterpillar, eats mulberry leaves and grows) → Pupa (caterpillar spins a silk cocoon around itself) → Adult moth (emerges from cocoon to mate and lay eggs). The silk thread is obtained at the pupa stage by boiling the cocoon.
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