Very Hungry Caterpillar Degrade Plastic at Record Speed.
It could be a step towards dealing with water pollution.
The creature in question is a waxworm, the caterpillar larvae of a wax moth and an enemy of beekeepers as it’s a parasite in bee hives.
Newsweek notes that chicken embryos researcher Federica Betocchini happens to be a beekeeper and was recently cleaning a hive and removed some waxworms, putting them in a plastic bag.
Later she discovered they had eaten their way to freedom.
She tipped off plastic biodegradation experts Paolo Bombelli and Christopher Howe at Cambridge University.
They carried out a study and found that the waxworms are able to digest polyethylene, which makes up around 40 percent of the plastics worldwide and is most commonly used for plastic packaging, bags and bottles.
While some bacteria and fungi are known to be able to break down polyethylene, this can take between three and seven months to get started and then proceed at a very slow rate.
Bombelli and Howe found that a waxworm can make its first hole in around forty minutes and then ramp up to around three holes every hour.
The most likely explanation is that the waxworms house microbes in their stomachs that carry out the degradation, making the waxworms prepared to eat the plastic in a way other creatures wouldn’t.