Bombyx mori with the opportunity to witness the life cycle of silkworms. The practice of raising silkworms by children as pets has, in non-silk farming South Africa, led to the development of extremely hardy landraces of silkworms, because they are invariably subjected to hardships not encountered by commercially farmed members of the species. However, these worms, not being selectively bred as such, are possibly inferior in silk production and may exhibit other undesirable traits. The full genome of the silkworm was published in 2008 by the International Silkworm Genome Consortium. Draft sequences were published in 2004. The genome of the silkworm is
Bombyx mandarina differ in karyotype from those of inland China. Domestic silkmoths are closer to the latter regarding mtDNA sequence data, and especially lack some genetic apomorphies of the northeastern "B. mandarina". Thus, the initial domestic stock came from inland China. "B. mandarina" is able to hybridize with "B. mori". Both in the wild and in a domesticated environment, females release pheromones and wait for males to be attracted and fly to them. However, "B. mori" males cannot fly. Hybridisation in the wild, therefore, inevitably means breeding between domestic ("B. mori") females and wild ("B. mandarina") males. Hybridization is possible in both