Caterpillar leather

I had a few dead pinned catterpillars when I was younger, their skin is pretty tough when it's dry.

>>2231991
>fantasy world
>could you
Yes.

By the way, you might want to direct your future inquiries to /tg/. Someone there can usually come up with hard numbers on how much plastic explosive can fit inside a human chest cavity, or whether a dark elf vagina can hold enough spiders to cover an average barbarian.

>>2231991
I would imagine it is made of chitin.

>>2231994
Are they brittle though?

>>2231996
>could you
>Yes.
Yeah I get that, but I like everything to make sense. Limit the suspension of disbelief at all corners.

>By the way, you might want to direct your future inquiries to /tg/.
Yeah perhaps, I'll try that if this doesn't come up with anything.
>>2232008
I do believe they're soft skinned when alive though, is it highly flexible chitin?

>>2232037
Chitin is actually soft and transparent, it's what makes insects exoskeletons soft. The stuff that makes them hard is called sclerotin. A mix of those two in different proportions creates the overall property of the skin.

>>2232042
Alright, thanks. I'll try and find out if a non-porous type fabric like leather could be made from chitin.

>>2232042
And to answer your question: Caterpillars mostly don't have sclerotin, their skin is almost purely chitin, so they're soft and flexible.
It's malleable, stretchable and pulls back into shape (How have you never touched a caterpillar before?).

Here is an example of a bioplastic made almost purely from chitin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrilk

I imagine wearing that would be like wearing two dozen layers of plastic wrap.

>>2232053
Ah, that's cool, thanks a lot. I wonder if it could be made tough enough to make belts or bellows or something out of it.

>>2232053
not him but where I grew up, all caterpillars either had a jelly goop coat, were fuzzy or were not to be touched as they made you itch.

>>2232083
A caterpillar fur coat that inflicts contact damage on attacking enemies would be stylish and cool.

>>2232083
That's just not true. I mean, they might've made you itchy, but that's your mental illness not a property inherent in the caterpillars

>>2232121
They literally had stinging hairs that get embedded in your skin you nutter. Are you only familiar with cute swallowtail caterpillars or something?

>>2232194
unless by "all caterpillars" you meant a tiny fraction of caterpillars you're a fucking crazy person. if you actually meant to say that you're a drooling retard

>>2232209
all the caterpillars in my hometown had one of those three characteristics, you mongoloid

>>2232295
No. You just didn't look hard enough. The distribution of butterfly families around the world is surprisingly constant. With the exception of the antarctic, greenland, iceland and some other godforsaken places you would have had Noctuidae, Sphingidae and Nymphalidae species around.

It's ok if you admit you never went outside.

>>2232295
that is true for literally 0 places. no such place has ever existed