Keratin digestion
Why a wardrobe loses the wool and keeps the cotton. A very small number of animals can digest keratin, and those are the ones that eat clothes.
In detail
Clothes moths, carpet beetles and hide beetles are protein feeders, and they are among the very few animals able to digest keratin — the structural protein of animal hair, wool, horn, feather and skin. Cotton and linen are cellulose; polyester and nylon are synthetic polymers. Neither is food. That one fact explains a pattern most people misread. Damage concentrated on the wool, the silk, the feather trim and the leather, with the cotton beside it untouched, is not evidence about where things were stored. It is evidence about what the fibre is. It also explains why damage turns up in the least disturbed places. Larvae feed in dark, still conditions — folds, closets, carpet pile under something heavy — and a garment worn and washed often is disturbed too much. The useful consequence is diagnostic rather than chemical. A powdery deposit on a wool carpet the same colour as the carpet is not dust: the excreta takes the colour of the material being eaten. And a trail of bitten fibres, or lost pile, is missing material rather than a mark.
Why
- Frass and pest residue is explained by Keratin digestion
- Wool is explained by Keratin digestion
- Silk is explained by Keratin digestion
- Carpet is explained by Keratin digestion
- Finished leather is explained by Keratin digestion
Sources for this page
Sources
Conserve O Gram 3/11: Identifying Museum Insect Pest Damage
National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, 2008 · Government or regulator
Relied on for: That textile pests are protein feeders and among the very few animals that can digest keratin, the primary protein found in animal hair and horn; that the larva bites off a fibre and moves to the next, leaving a trail of damaged fibres; that they prefer dark closets, attics and the folds of fabrics; and that the colour of the excreta takes on the colour of the material being fed on. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — 'Evidence of Pest Activity', 'Textile Pests', 'Clothes Moths' and 'Wood Pests'. Supports the claim as stated. Opens a class of question the catalogue could not previously take: whether the mark in front of the reader is a cleaning problem at all, or material that has already gone.
Last reviewed by a person on .