People have been transforming the world's insects for

millennia – but as the Anthropocene gathers pace, the process

is speeding up.
n a factory in Japan, a million farm animals are being carefully tended. Just
a few days before, they twisted themselves out of their sand-like eggs and
into the wide world. Now they're minuscule walnut-brown caterpillars – mere
commas on the neatly folded sheets of white fabric they inhabit.

Their conveyor belt "mother" is diligent, if slightly detached: three times a day,
she unceremoniously dumps a layer of reconstituted mulberry leaf mulch on
top of them. It is quickly devoured – and within a few weeks, they graduate to
eating fresh mulberry leaves, which are scattered over long, flat tables as
though they're a dish being garnished. Finally, when the caterpillars are as
plump as human fingers, with creamy, papery skin, it's time for their big
moment: they're shovelled onto cardboard racks, where each one spends the
next few days weaving itself into a delicate white cocoon.

These are silkworms – and up to a trillion are raised every year. In fact,
though they're conspicuously absent from children's storybooks, agricultural
fairs and farmyard tales, they are the second-most abundantly cultivated
animal on the planet, after honey bees. They're also widely considered to be
domesticated – part of the exclusive pantheon of early human partners which
helped our species to conquer the world. 

Around 7,500 years ago, when modern horses were still roaming

the windswept steppes of southwestern Russia and turkeys were wild
animals strutting around North America's woodlands, silkworms were plucked
from mulberry bushes in central China to begin their relationship with
people.

In the millennia since, they've undergone changes at every level

– genetically, behaviourally, physiologically, and even aesthetically. And they
are not the only insect to do so.

Humans are currently farming a wider variety of tiny insect livestock than ever
before. Across the globe, mealworms swarm in shipping containers, crickets
scramble around makeshift egg carton enclosures in homes, and bees tour
entire countries, neatly packed into portable hives. With each passing
generation, they're being transformed: the more dependent we become on
them, the more they depend on us.