In my experience, common clothes moth[1] or its larvae is also capable of eating through a plastic bag enclosing dry foodstuffs or cereal. Not sure if they're actually digesting it or could survive on the polyethylene diet though.
Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution
131–140 of 329 posts
Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution
#132I bet YC or IndieBio would jump at a project like this, great startup potential. Scaling up enzymes ftw! Anyone interested? IndieBio, $250k seed investment: http://indiebio.co/companies/
Sounds like something littered with government regulations and patents. I stay away from anything bio for that reason. Hopefully this one finds some motivated individuals who can take it to industrial scale though.
Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I try not to kill flies, no. The only exception is for multiple flies that won't go away. Ditto for ants. It's a bit strange that violence toward insects is fine, but violence towards dogs is not. Ever killed a dog because it annoyed you? That said, doing it for science at least has a justification.
Tangentially related and I expect a 50% chance to be punished for this but it is really interesting and I think it deserves some thought: It always surprises me how a number of HNers worries about killing insects, even for science - all while supporting the killing of unborn children.
This is a ridiculous oversimplification of the issues and a guaranteed way of hijacking this for a completely unproductive argument.
Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution
#134Would be good to have plastic waste broken down, but be careful not to take down our whole civilization with it. Almost everything today is made out of plastic...
In many post-apocalyptic works of fiction it's a disease that wipes out much of humanity; what if instead it was a bacteria or pest that rapidly consumes all our plastic that causes civilization to collapse?
Scott Westerfeld's Uglies is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which civilization collapsed due to a bacteria that consumed oil very fast. Good read.
Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ever killed a fly because it annoyed you? This is not much different. In fact, this was done for science.
I try not to kill flies, no. The only exception is for multiple flies that won't go away. Ditto for ants. It's a bit strange that violence toward insects is fine, but violence towards dogs is not. Ever killed a dog because it annoyed you? That said, doing it for science at least has a justification.
Every time I advocate for animal rights on this forum, it's met with downvotes and people huffing and puffing about the benefit to humanity and science.
Your argument is sound...flies are animals. They have exoskeletons, six legs, and compound eyes but they are animals nonetheless. However, our cultural "worth" of flies is much lower than that of dogs, so even people who supposedly value logic above all else would rather scoff and silently disagree than challenge their own shaky belief system.
Granted, if a few dead caterpillars can cure our accumulating trash problem, that's a tradeoff I am ok with.
Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like how LSD was discovered [0]. It's so potent that it can be absorbed just by skin contact, that's why police must use gloves when seizing it. Imagine yourself coming home with your bicycle and having a massive (250 ug) LSD trip only having experienced it once, pretty scary and interesting at the same time [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann#Discovery_of_LS... [1]: http://www.thegooddrugsguide.…
Despite the movies showing weird/scary trips, LSD is a very comforting, pleasant, and soft experience. You don't see things or talk to objects, at most you see some visual stimuli, like blending colors. People who say that they were hallucinating have never tried it or are lying. It would definitely be a surprise though if it was unexpected. A possibly pleasant experience depending on the person though... Definitely…
The paranoic stimuli and possible unfolding of latent mental conditions can't be underestimated though.
Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution
#137"A chance discovery occurred when one of the scientific team, Federica Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper, was removing the parasitic pests from the honeycombs in her hives. The worms were temporarily kept in a typical plastic shopping bag that became riddled with holes." What a great accident.
As any reptile owner will tell you, wax worms will eat through plastic containers so you should store them in glass. It's common knowledge. It is however amazing that nobody (me included) never thought that this could be a solution to our plastic issues. "It's common knowledge, why waste time thinking about it?"
They probably assumed scientists already knew about it but didn't think it was a bid deal.
Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution
#138"A chance discovery occurred when one of the scientific team, Federica Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper, was removing the parasitic pests from the honeycombs in her hives. The worms were temporarily kept in a typical plastic shopping bag that became riddled with holes." What a great accident.
As any reptile owner will tell you, wax worms will eat through plastic containers so you should store them in glass. It's common knowledge. It is however amazing that nobody (me included) never thought that this could be a solution to our plastic issues. "It's common knowledge, why waste time thinking about it?"
It's (apparently) common knowledge among reptile owners. That doesn't mean it's common knowledge among the particular scientists studying how to decompose plastics. Siloed knowledge will always be a problem (at least among humans. With omnipresent AI, that could change...).
Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution
#139Sooo, cover garbage dumps in caterpillars?
Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I forget where I heard or read this but for something like millions of years wood and other plant materials was not broken down by anything at all as there were no animals to eat away at them.
That's the carboniferous period! [1] And it went on for about 60 Million years which seems an unfathomable timespan. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous
yeah, imagine all the dead trees that basically don't decompose because nothing can eat them. that'd be a sight to behold.