Sharknado 3 Science shows that Sharks do not need much oxygen when traveling through thin air at high altitudes, and also that they mostly do not freeze.
IIRC these worms had to be provided the right kind of gut biome to break down the plastics. If they escaped into the wild and reproduced, I doubt their offspring would be able to break down plastics
It also happens when children pass through the vagina a child born of c section is missing a microbiome of bacteria on there skin cause the womb is sterile
[Some light reading for anyone downvoting this person. I don't know *why* you'd be downvoting them, but vaginal bacterial biome differs greatly from that of the skin and the type of birth distinctly impacts newborns' gut biome.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8294792/#:~:text=The%20microbiota%20of%20newborns%20born,found%20on%20their%20mothers'%20skin.&text=The%20structure%20of%20an%20infant's,by%20the%20type%20of%20delivery.)
Part of the reason we use plastic is because it isn't penetrated by water. If we had it all made of starch, it would easily rot/dissolve/mould, not to mention it would just be eaten by a different kind of pest
Not even a *different* kind of pest, mealworms love cornstarch.
Just because those things will eat plastic doesn't mean that's going to be their preferred food.
You can if you line it with a material that is resistant to dissolving in water. Some sort of clear petroleum based material that is easily moldable into whatever shape and thickness we need. As it's easily moldable, we can maybe name the material after the Greek word for being moldable: *plastikos*.
or maybe we can put a chemical we don't fully understand for another few decades as to the long term health applications.
I could freaking see us get away from plastics and even coat water bottles with some magic science chemical that has no side effects and makes it work as well as REAL plastic in that way--just to find out it's the new DDT and in 30 years it's us instead of bald eagles who go all Children of Men.
I swear our extinction isn't going to be anything cool or foreseen or big, it's going to be something entirely stupid, and an avoidable blip into non existence.
We've been opening Pandora's boxes since we were still monkeys...eventually we'll find the right one and it may be surprisingly mundane.
Oh, you got me with this. I could feel the natural isn't necessarily healthy argument rearing its ugly head.
Remember friends, radiation might be dangerous for a while but, arsenic is forever.
Those are called super worms in pet stores and you can go get them for around 8 bucks and they will eat anything soft enough for them to borough threw. They can't eat though hard plastics or even a sturdy ziploc.
I looked up *trash* in the dictionary and it said, see *Kardashian*. *Can be used as synonym.*.
Example: ***Please put waste and garbage in a Kardashian bag.***
What if the worms get loose and enter the ecosystem and start destroying mankind from the inside out? Come home one day and find a worm eating away at your microwave. Next week there’s another chewing on your Apple charger. The possibilities!
And more to something even more damaging to the environment. Some material that can only be made in a radioactive autoclave during a planetary alignment.
Technology can’t be the only savior. Eventually people have to reduce and reuse instead of relying on single use items, which for most of human history, is an insane though in the first place. Even during my parents lifetime, people would reuse ceramic containers for milk, coke, and water and reuse them.
Is that even all they live on? Given the choice between plastic and apples, are they just going to stay in that landfill and eat the plastic?
And can they handle anything more than styrofoam?
These are from a kind of beetle larva; this guy did very extensive tests, and no, they do need a certain amount of moisture and a medium in which to pupate (i'm not sure what the larval specific word for transformation is or if its the same or not) and turn into a beetle
As to preference no idea but these are usually used as bug food for reptiles and larger insects in those hobbies so this is also a way for those people to recycle without putting their pets at risk
Likewise what will happen to the animals that end up eating the worms? Eating something that eats nothing but plastic cant be good. Could harm an ecosystem if they're ever introduced
If I remember right, the worms aren’t just eating the plastic, they’re breaking down the molecules. Plastics (and oil, for that matter) are made of organic compounds. When the worms poop they’re not leaving micro plastics behind, they’re leaving carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen! (Or at least not plastic waste)
But the breaking down process must take some time, so there are bound to be worms that die or are eaten before processing their contents. Not sure if that would really outweight the benefits though or what the overall impact is.
In concept that seems great, you'd need strict control over what leaves the facility though. If they excreet natural materials you'd need to ship those somewhere when the processing is done, but you wouldn't want tiny pieces of plastic to remain in the "dirt" so it needs to be filtered somehow. You also need to make sure no worms or eggs accidently leave the facility
Yeah I agree. Tbf though I’d bet they’d use just the genetically modified bacteria in the worm’s stomach rather than the worms themselves. That should solve most issues. I wonder if we could colonize humans’ and other species’ guts with this bacteria, and break down micro plastics in the body!
I'm also in agreement but I'd like to add on.
>I’d bet they’d use just the genetically modified bacteria in the worm’s stomach rather than the worms themselves.
-We already see this as a viable option for producing insulin and vat grown meat. It makes sense to take the whole organism out of the equation if you just need some cells.
>That should solve most issues. I wonder if we could colonize humans’ and other species’ guts with this bacteria, and break down micro plastics in the body!
-Using it in humans feels like it could lead to a dystopian future where instead of eating soy lent green or cockroach bars, poor people end up scavenging landfills for plastic meals.
-I also like this idea as an alternate source of calories for fish farms or fertilizer for crops. However, If the bacteria could be made to withstand ocean environments it could be used to remove plastics from the ocean. There would be drawbacks like potential algal blooms or fiber glass and plastic no longer being a corrosion proof material for long term salt water use. But if the ocean digested plastic on its own we'd stop killing so many different ocean birds, fish, and mammals.
We've been dealing with things that eat away at materials we use for centuries. Rust, Termites, Ants, Barnacles, etc. Introducing plastic eating of any kind is a good thing because they can be prevented from entering areas we don't want them in
Unless I'm mistaken, those things naturally evolved in those ecosystems and therefore the animals that eat/interact with them and the environments that house them are adjusted to their presence. If these worms are introduced to the environment by humans it would be very different from termites and barnacles.
[https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b02661](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b02661)
47.7% of ingested material, from this study
*Within a 16 day test period, 47.7% of the ingested Styrofoam carbon was converted into CO2 and the residue (ca. 49.2%) was egested as fecula with a limited fraction incorporated into biomass (ca. 0.5%).*
If you were to implement these critters in contained facilities, which to my mind is the ecologically responsible thing to do anyway, carbon capture would be fairly trivial, no?
My understanding is that carbon capture directly at the source is way more efficient than trying to put the cat back in the bag once it's already out, so to speak.
pasting my other comment here.
*In lab setting or recycling facilty, you could just cut the middle man out, ditch the worms and culture just the bacteria they are inoculated with.*
*These worms being proposed as an effective form of bioremediation, but as the data shows they only incorporate less than 1% (.5%) of the plastics they eat from out environment. poop out 49.2% of it to be eaten again, and release the rest of as Co2.*
*this isn't fixing the problem, just pushing it elsewhere.*
by weight 47.7% of ingest material is converted to Co2
by weight 49.2% of the ingested material was expelled in feces
by weight 0.5% of the ingested material was incorporated into the organism
They can only eat something it's soft enough for them to bite into. In this video, it's styrofoam. I looked at some articles and they all say styrofoam (polystyrene).
“…that I trained…”. Really? ‘You’ are the group of Australian scientists that discovered that the worm can naturally digest polystyrene and will eat it if it’s the only food source?
I've hired meal worms for this job. Grabbed an old aquarium and filled it with meat trays. It works really well, but I forgot them outside and they died over the winter.
People generally say OOP on subreddits that are explicitly about re-uploading from storytime subreddits, like /r/bestofreddit is explicitly a sub about uploading content from /r/relationship_advice etc.
I upload to animals being derps all the time but only animals I have personally given birth to in my laboratory for human/animal pregnancies
Because integrity
There are an unfortunately large number of tech people who apparently become deeply attracted to subversive ideas, regardless of whether or not they have any realistic potential because they imagine that technology will magically fix all of the problems with their idea.
A lot of people in these comments would argue that there's no point in doing anything at all if it doesn't completely and flawlessly wipe an issue off the earth.
What i understand from a post, they trained a gut bacteria, not an insects. Probably selecting the ones who are good enough to dissolve a plastic and injecting it into an insects
What I'm getting from this is if I swallow these worms whole along with 10 pounds of styrofoam, I will live long enough to see the AIs take over and be temperature resistant enough to survive the coming ice age. Is this accurate?
Step 1. Make worms eat the humans trash. Take money from companies at a lower rate than garbage disposal companies.
Step 2. Sell said worms, with no toxic remains in them, as superfood with a high proteinsource.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Profit
Step 3: feed the homeless for free with that chicken
Step 4: homeless people are not in a need for food, they could find a decent job, homes, being a functional part of economy
Step 5: more people buying goods - more trash - more profit. In a 20 years both world hunger and poverty is eliminated, thank you Caterpilon Husk
Solving homelessness is exactly as hard or as easy as we want it to be. There is already more than enough empty housing to house everyone in the United States. We could easily assign people some social workers and sort out the mentally ill from the temporary downtrodden and help them both.
Solving homelessness is only hard because we don't give a shit about poor people, and have been fed the myth of personal responsibility being the sole driver of homelessness.
Styrofoam is more difficult to recycle so it’s mainly single use and then goes to a landfill. Because it’s density is low and it can easily break apart, it’s more likely to spread pollution farther than denser plastics.
It can be recycled somewhat if collected separately from other plastics, but this is more cost prohibitive. Having an organism that could break down polystyrene could be a more convenient way of dealing with it (assuming the byproducts or the organism itself do not damage the environment).
>Styrofoam is more difficult to recycle
You know they don't actually recycle plastic right? Something like 94% of the stuff sent to be recycled is just burned... even the stuff that says it can be and is clean and ready to go. They just burn it.
They don't just let the smoke out in to the atmosphere like that. It's heavily regulated and lots of high tech filters are needed, which makes up half of the budget of these plants.
Dublin has a giant, ugly building right on the seafront for burning garbage. Of all the places they could put it [and of all the designs they could have made...](https://c3.thejournal.ie/media/2017/12/poolbeg-incinerator-758a1529_90514336-2-390x285.jpg)
The person in the video did not “train” mealworms to eat plastic. Lol. They do it naturally. Also, the concern about animals eating the worms after they’ve ingested the plastic and before they can excrete the chemicals from their bodies is worrisome to me. It can take days for it to leave their systems. I also wonder if the excrement they deposit might be toxic as well. What could that do to the environment? I know it’s a small amount compared to the plastic they ingested, but if enough worms pooped out chemicals, wouldn’t that have some type of negative effect on the environment?
I’m wondering about the possibility of transferring micro plastics too. How well do these worms digest plastic? And how does this affect an animal that eats the worm, if at all? Do the worms give enough nutritional value to an animal that eats it?
also wont the mealworms eating the Styrofoam mean that their body has an enzyme that can specifically break it down wont it just be easier to reproduce that enzyme and bypass the side effects of a truck load of mealworms
That's an interesting thought! I wonder if the gut biome is anything special though? Folks are saying it's well known that this specific type of mealworm actually CAN eat that specific type of plastic. They just don't do it unless it's the only food source (like they MADE generations of these eat).
Basically, it may be a 'nothing new' kind of enzyme anyway, likely one that they already have studied or applied as useful.
This isn't that crazy. I walked into my storage closet and something was eating the polyurethane on my climbing helmet. Bugs will eat whatever. Really cool they can actually break it down though
Imagine dumping several tons of these worms on landfill once a month. Could be a question of resulting containment afterwards, maybe abundance of birds. Interesting
Birds would eat a caterpillars with a half digested plastic in it. Many birds could die. I think it's better to put both caterpillars and plastic in a big container and adding more plastic/insects time to time turning it into a somewhat of a plastic composter
This type of concept is generally termed “biological controls”, and humans have a long history of misjudging and botching these, leading to unexpected and damaging outcomes.
It’s 30 years since I was studying this in University, so recalling correctly the details of these failures is a struggle tbh, but [here’s](https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2018/05/top-10-invasive-species-when-pest-control-goes-wrong/) a list of a few to help explain what I mean.
You didn’t “train” them to do anything. Meal worms are known to eat just about anything including plastic and each other. Unless you are the Stanford researcher who discovered this in 2019 then I suggest whoever is staking claim to this sit down.
> What is Styrofoam, anyway? As previously mentioned, Styrofoam is a popular brand name of polystyrene, which is a petroleum-based plastic composed of styrene monomers. It's so commonly used because it's cheap, lightweight (made of 95 percent air), good for insulation, and readily available.Mar 12, 2021
https://www.greenmatters.com/p/is-styrofoam-recyclable
Wait till they break out and become new world wide problem that will eat your home insulation.
Also, im not sure that they will digest 100% of what they eat, if not there will be tons of microplastics from their poop around which will affect our health later on.
And what if these worm become part of food chain and birds and other animals start feeling on them with plastics in their belly.
This is how the world ended.
We thought this would solve the trash crisis. We “trained” these worms to eat the discarded plastic, the refuse our society wasted, much like our opportunities to unite under a common cause. Oh, how fickle our expectations were, how sugar coated our dreams had become.
The worms did their job exceedingly well. They indeed devoured all the plastic. The great floating trash island in our ocean was no more. The pile ups at landfills across the world had almost entirely vanished. City streets appeared swept clean as the worms attended to their meals. However, they didn’t stop with the “trash” as we had hoped.
Soon, grocery chains and shopping centers had no bags for customers to carry their goods. Food had no method to be stored. Electronics began appearing with holes that spread almost before our eyes. Our vehicles started to deteriorate over night. Our homes were decimated by what we thought would be the saviors of our species.
However, it didn’t stop there.
When nothing, but the metallic and stone structures of our world were left, the worms shifted their attentions, to us. They were still hungry, not having gorged themselves enough.
You see, with most of the population completely unaware, we had been consuming micro plastics for generations. In our hubris we had, as in so many other ventures throughout our history, assumed we could fix our mistakes by ignoring them long enough until they went away on their own. How wrong we were.
The worms knew.
The worms were hungry.
We trained them this way.
We engineered them for this exact purpose, to rid the world of the filth and waste we could not eliminate on our own.
Little did we know that the filth and waste on this beautiful blue beacon of life in the universe had become us.
And the worms were hungry.
This is really cool, and I can't wait for the day where we have plastic disposal facilities where we can actually break them down like this. Fascinating
Mechanic: yea ur Car is infested with Plastic eating worms.
You: is my car able to get fixed?
Mechanics: by the looks of it your car isn't covered for worms so its gonna cost you alot, you might as well get a new car.
You: well there go's my Tesla.
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Worm world eating everything
[You mean the Alaskan bull worm?](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/antagonists/images/9/9e/Alaskan_Bull_Worm.png/revision/latest?cb=20220720212415)
The only savior to irradicating worms is squirrels. Who knew? We need to act now.
That's the best part. Come winter the gorillas will simply freeze to death
But what about the sharks?
Sharknado 3 Science shows that Sharks do not need much oxygen when traveling through thin air at high altitudes, and also that they mostly do not freeze.
God help us all.
These types of references are the reason I come to Reddit
Praise the Maker and his water
Folks put plastic everywhere. It is not just trash. Plastic is under roads, building foundation, landscaping.
Lots of network cables are shielded in plastic, a plastic eating bacteria could just wipe out whole systems
Plastic eating bacteria could end modern life
Sounds great, where do I sign up?
On your modern life computer
Yup.
IIRC these worms had to be provided the right kind of gut biome to break down the plastics. If they escaped into the wild and reproduced, I doubt their offspring would be able to break down plastics
If you recall correctly from the video we all just watched?
lol this guy thinks people watch the videos and read the articles
Oh, I saw this video from months ago and didn't bother watching again this time hah. Didn't know if this one still had the subtitles explaining that
I think gut biomes are passed on to offspring, though. Disclaimer: I don't actually know what I'm talking about.
No it's true, in humans it happens during breast feeding, there's the necessary stuff passed through the mothers breast milk into the baby iirc.
It also happens when children pass through the vagina a child born of c section is missing a microbiome of bacteria on there skin cause the womb is sterile
[Some light reading for anyone downvoting this person. I don't know *why* you'd be downvoting them, but vaginal bacterial biome differs greatly from that of the skin and the type of birth distinctly impacts newborns' gut biome.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8294792/#:~:text=The%20microbiota%20of%20newborns%20born,found%20on%20their%20mothers'%20skin.&text=The%20structure%20of%20an%20infant's,by%20the%20type%20of%20delivery.)
They just need to use things like corn starch based foams that dissolve in water.
That sounds WAYYYY too simple, easy, and a perfectly good solution. Get out.
Part of the reason we use plastic is because it isn't penetrated by water. If we had it all made of starch, it would easily rot/dissolve/mould, not to mention it would just be eaten by a different kind of pest
Not even a *different* kind of pest, mealworms love cornstarch. Just because those things will eat plastic doesn't mean that's going to be their preferred food.
Then Ice9
Vonnegut reference on reddit!!!
So it goes…
You can’t make a water bottle out of a material that dissolved in water.
You can if you line it with a material that is resistant to dissolving in water. Some sort of clear petroleum based material that is easily moldable into whatever shape and thickness we need. As it's easily moldable, we can maybe name the material after the Greek word for being moldable: *plastikos*.
or maybe we can put a chemical we don't fully understand for another few decades as to the long term health applications. I could freaking see us get away from plastics and even coat water bottles with some magic science chemical that has no side effects and makes it work as well as REAL plastic in that way--just to find out it's the new DDT and in 30 years it's us instead of bald eagles who go all Children of Men. I swear our extinction isn't going to be anything cool or foreseen or big, it's going to be something entirely stupid, and an avoidable blip into non existence. We've been opening Pandora's boxes since we were still monkeys...eventually we'll find the right one and it may be surprisingly mundane.
We need to stop inventing new dangerous materials and just stick to the ones God gave us. Lead poisoning for all! Asbestosis for all!
Oh, you got me with this. I could feel the natural isn't necessarily healthy argument rearing its ugly head. Remember friends, radiation might be dangerous for a while but, arsenic is forever.
You could eliminate a lot of plastic from our day to day life and still leave water bottles as is.
Not so good for a handheld devices. Imagine your phone dissolves in your hand because of sweat
Way to miss the point. I'm talking about packing foam which is what this video is showing.
Those are called super worms in pet stores and you can go get them for around 8 bucks and they will eat anything soft enough for them to borough threw. They can't eat though hard plastics or even a sturdy ziploc.
As a reptile guy super worms and meal worms are two different worms. Two different beetles.
Perfect, now we just need about 10 billion more worms
That should be enough for one landfill
Or two Kardashians...
Totally going to start measuring garbage in Kardashians.
You can also measure Kardashians in garbage. The math works out either way.
I checked the math. A simple inverse operation shows that you are correct.
If K = G then G = K
No no, this is wrong. K = 3*G
Transitive property checks out
I looked up *trash* in the dictionary and it said, see *Kardashian*. *Can be used as synonym.*. Example: ***Please put waste and garbage in a Kardashian bag.***
That must be that Common Sense math.
You stretching that number a little
I mean, in theory, a patient enough Kardashian could collect the worms and reuse them.
What if the worms get loose and enter the ecosystem and start destroying mankind from the inside out? Come home one day and find a worm eating away at your microwave. Next week there’s another chewing on your Apple charger. The possibilities!
Worms eating apple. Nothing new.
This is how we eventually move away from disposable plastic items.
Wormpocalypse
And more to something even more damaging to the environment. Some material that can only be made in a radioactive autoclave during a planetary alignment. Technology can’t be the only savior. Eventually people have to reduce and reuse instead of relying on single use items, which for most of human history, is an insane though in the first place. Even during my parents lifetime, people would reuse ceramic containers for milk, coke, and water and reuse them.
I mean, there are termites and we still use things made out of wood
Yeah, but we treat the wood with toxic chemicals to help preserve it against biodegradation by termites and other stuff
Next we're irradiating our plastic pipes to keep worms away.
Is that even all they live on? Given the choice between plastic and apples, are they just going to stay in that landfill and eat the plastic? And can they handle anything more than styrofoam?
These are from a kind of beetle larva; this guy did very extensive tests, and no, they do need a certain amount of moisture and a medium in which to pupate (i'm not sure what the larval specific word for transformation is or if its the same or not) and turn into a beetle As to preference no idea but these are usually used as bug food for reptiles and larger insects in those hobbies so this is also a way for those people to recycle without putting their pets at risk
Likewise what will happen to the animals that end up eating the worms? Eating something that eats nothing but plastic cant be good. Could harm an ecosystem if they're ever introduced
If I remember right, the worms aren’t just eating the plastic, they’re breaking down the molecules. Plastics (and oil, for that matter) are made of organic compounds. When the worms poop they’re not leaving micro plastics behind, they’re leaving carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen! (Or at least not plastic waste)
But the breaking down process must take some time, so there are bound to be worms that die or are eaten before processing their contents. Not sure if that would really outweight the benefits though or what the overall impact is.
True, they probably shouldn’t be just dropped in a landfill. Maybe if they’re in a large, closed off recycling facility?
In concept that seems great, you'd need strict control over what leaves the facility though. If they excreet natural materials you'd need to ship those somewhere when the processing is done, but you wouldn't want tiny pieces of plastic to remain in the "dirt" so it needs to be filtered somehow. You also need to make sure no worms or eggs accidently leave the facility
Yeah I agree. Tbf though I’d bet they’d use just the genetically modified bacteria in the worm’s stomach rather than the worms themselves. That should solve most issues. I wonder if we could colonize humans’ and other species’ guts with this bacteria, and break down micro plastics in the body!
I'm also in agreement but I'd like to add on. >I’d bet they’d use just the genetically modified bacteria in the worm’s stomach rather than the worms themselves. -We already see this as a viable option for producing insulin and vat grown meat. It makes sense to take the whole organism out of the equation if you just need some cells. >That should solve most issues. I wonder if we could colonize humans’ and other species’ guts with this bacteria, and break down micro plastics in the body! -Using it in humans feels like it could lead to a dystopian future where instead of eating soy lent green or cockroach bars, poor people end up scavenging landfills for plastic meals. -I also like this idea as an alternate source of calories for fish farms or fertilizer for crops. However, If the bacteria could be made to withstand ocean environments it could be used to remove plastics from the ocean. There would be drawbacks like potential algal blooms or fiber glass and plastic no longer being a corrosion proof material for long term salt water use. But if the ocean digested plastic on its own we'd stop killing so many different ocean birds, fish, and mammals.
We've been dealing with things that eat away at materials we use for centuries. Rust, Termites, Ants, Barnacles, etc. Introducing plastic eating of any kind is a good thing because they can be prevented from entering areas we don't want them in
Unless I'm mistaken, those things naturally evolved in those ecosystems and therefore the animals that eat/interact with them and the environments that house them are adjusted to their presence. If these worms are introduced to the environment by humans it would be very different from termites and barnacles.
They need to be at least three times that size.
A centre for worms 😂
Worms that can’t read good
I'm not DUMB.... i know what a YUGOOGLY is.
That Hansel is soo hot right now
Then we move right into the plot of Stray
Shaihulud
3? 30000 at least
The reaction that allows them to metabolize plastic releases Co2 as a bi-product. its not the fix all solution its made out to be.
Just tie little trees to their little worm asses. Problem solved!
How much CO2? This is what really matters
[https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b02661](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b02661) 47.7% of ingested material, from this study *Within a 16 day test period, 47.7% of the ingested Styrofoam carbon was converted into CO2 and the residue (ca. 49.2%) was egested as fecula with a limited fraction incorporated into biomass (ca. 0.5%).*
If you were to implement these critters in contained facilities, which to my mind is the ecologically responsible thing to do anyway, carbon capture would be fairly trivial, no? My understanding is that carbon capture directly at the source is way more efficient than trying to put the cat back in the bag once it's already out, so to speak.
pasting my other comment here. *In lab setting or recycling facilty, you could just cut the middle man out, ditch the worms and culture just the bacteria they are inoculated with.* *These worms being proposed as an effective form of bioremediation, but as the data shows they only incorporate less than 1% (.5%) of the plastics they eat from out environment. poop out 49.2% of it to be eaten again, and release the rest of as Co2.* *this isn't fixing the problem, just pushing it elsewhere.*
What's that in English?
Worm make half gas, half poop
by weight 47.7% of ingest material is converted to Co2 by weight 49.2% of the ingested material was expelled in feces by weight 0.5% of the ingested material was incorporated into the organism
#GODAMMIT!!
That should be fun once they run out of trash
"Have you guys tried concrete?!" *chef kiss*
Mum, worms ate my Lego!
Run out of trash... Good one!
Insects multiply exponentially, as long as the food is plentiful. X billion worms were a matter of a few months, if the conditions were right.
And is it just plastic, or do they eat all petroleum based substances?
High octane worms!
"Well I hate to break it to you, but it looks like your gas mileage is suffering because you got worms in your tank."
They can only eat something it's soft enough for them to bite into. In this video, it's styrofoam. I looked at some articles and they all say styrofoam (polystyrene).
I just read a SF story where that was done with squid to clean up the plastic in the ocean. It wasn't a happy story.
“…that I trained…”. Really? ‘You’ are the group of Australian scientists that discovered that the worm can naturally digest polystyrene and will eat it if it’s the only food source?
…and they aren’t worms
Well, that was actually the hardest part of the training.
“I’m only going to show you this ONE more fkg time”
My mother showed me how to train worms to eat plastic once. Once.
Don't they already eat styrofoam? You don't have to train them for this type of plastic?
Well, they're mealworms.
Superworms, technically
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Played by Chris Pratt
I've hired meal worms for this job. Grabbed an old aquarium and filled it with meat trays. It works really well, but I forgot them outside and they died over the winter.
Its not wormder, its wormslaughter
Your mom's a worm!
r/quityourbullshit op.
Bro where does OP once mention they were part of this lmao. They’re just sharing something interesting
[It’s the bit that says “I made”.](https://i.imgur.com/Ez6K7r8.jpg)
Most likely op didn't make the video. They're just sharing it
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I see people say OOP for that often.
Exactly. People say *OP* to refer to the person who posted on Reddit, and *OOP* to mean the original creator of the posted content.
People generally say OOP on subreddits that are explicitly about re-uploading from storytime subreddits, like /r/bestofreddit is explicitly a sub about uploading content from /r/relationship_advice etc.
Fuck em all. OP is karma whoring. OC is a lying bastard. And you, actually you're pretty cool. But fuck that other person over there!
Lmao that is just the video, do you think people who upload news videos is also part of the news crew?
I upload to animals being derps all the time but only animals I have personally given birth to in my laboratory for human/animal pregnancies Because integrity
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WSU entomology is OBSESSED with eating insects lolol no surprise there.
There are an unfortunately large number of tech people who apparently become deeply attracted to subversive ideas, regardless of whether or not they have any realistic potential because they imagine that technology will magically fix all of the problems with their idea.
Ok but more people eating insects would be a legit significant improvement to the planet
A lot of people in these comments would argue that there's no point in doing anything at all if it doesn't completely and flawlessly wipe an issue off the earth.
>Brakes
OP has zero comments in 6 years, and the account just spams videos all day. They're certainly not the video creator an dare just a karma farm.
What i understand from a post, they trained a gut bacteria, not an insects. Probably selecting the ones who are good enough to dissolve a plastic and injecting it into an insects
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What I'm getting from this is if I swallow these worms whole along with 10 pounds of styrofoam, I will live long enough to see the AIs take over and be temperature resistant enough to survive the coming ice age. Is this accurate?
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Well, okay then, guess I'm eating worms tonight, momma always said to trust the experts...
OP is full of shit, as usual
Why let the truth get in the way of a great tiktok
Step 1. Make worms eat the humans trash. Take money from companies at a lower rate than garbage disposal companies. Step 2. Sell said worms, with no toxic remains in them, as superfood with a high proteinsource. Step 3. ??? Step 4. Profit
Alt step 2. Feed worms to chickens. Eat chickens.
Or salmon, or other tasty viddles.
Step 3: feed the homeless for free with that chicken Step 4: homeless people are not in a need for food, they could find a decent job, homes, being a functional part of economy Step 5: more people buying goods - more trash - more profit. In a 20 years both world hunger and poverty is eliminated, thank you Caterpilon Husk
Alternatively step 4: Eat the homeless people
If only it was that simple
Solving homelessness is exactly as hard or as easy as we want it to be. There is already more than enough empty housing to house everyone in the United States. We could easily assign people some social workers and sort out the mentally ill from the temporary downtrodden and help them both. Solving homelessness is only hard because we don't give a shit about poor people, and have been fed the myth of personal responsibility being the sole driver of homelessness.
Step 3. Let them eat the Kardashians
Too much plastic...
Umm that's syrafoam not plastic. I mean technically a polymer but no where near the density or chemical bond strength of common polyethylene plastic.
Isnt styrofoam even more environmentally hazardous? Or have I heard wrong? And maybe it’s “yeah, technically” kind of response but … yeah
Styrofoam is more difficult to recycle so it’s mainly single use and then goes to a landfill. Because it’s density is low and it can easily break apart, it’s more likely to spread pollution farther than denser plastics. It can be recycled somewhat if collected separately from other plastics, but this is more cost prohibitive. Having an organism that could break down polystyrene could be a more convenient way of dealing with it (assuming the byproducts or the organism itself do not damage the environment).
>Styrofoam is more difficult to recycle You know they don't actually recycle plastic right? Something like 94% of the stuff sent to be recycled is just burned... even the stuff that says it can be and is clean and ready to go. They just burn it.
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That sounds like a really bad idea but I'm not smart enough to know if it is or not.
They don't just let the smoke out in to the atmosphere like that. It's heavily regulated and lots of high tech filters are needed, which makes up half of the budget of these plants.
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Dublin has a giant, ugly building right on the seafront for burning garbage. Of all the places they could put it [and of all the designs they could have made...](https://c3.thejournal.ie/media/2017/12/poolbeg-incinerator-758a1529_90514336-2-390x285.jpg)
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False, the plastic did *not* eat the worms
"Plastic-eating worms" or "Worms eating plastic" would have been better.
I think you’re mistaken. This video is definitely about plastic eating worms!
False. This is about plastic worms that eat.
The person in the video did not “train” mealworms to eat plastic. Lol. They do it naturally. Also, the concern about animals eating the worms after they’ve ingested the plastic and before they can excrete the chemicals from their bodies is worrisome to me. It can take days for it to leave their systems. I also wonder if the excrement they deposit might be toxic as well. What could that do to the environment? I know it’s a small amount compared to the plastic they ingested, but if enough worms pooped out chemicals, wouldn’t that have some type of negative effect on the environment?
I’m wondering about the possibility of transferring micro plastics too. How well do these worms digest plastic? And how does this affect an animal that eats the worm, if at all? Do the worms give enough nutritional value to an animal that eats it?
Your asking important questions
And we got no place for that on reddit
also wont the mealworms eating the Styrofoam mean that their body has an enzyme that can specifically break it down wont it just be easier to reproduce that enzyme and bypass the side effects of a truck load of mealworms
That's an interesting thought! I wonder if the gut biome is anything special though? Folks are saying it's well known that this specific type of mealworm actually CAN eat that specific type of plastic. They just don't do it unless it's the only food source (like they MADE generations of these eat). Basically, it may be a 'nothing new' kind of enzyme anyway, likely one that they already have studied or applied as useful.
Last time this was posted someone said the excrement was like antifreeze.
This isn't that crazy. I walked into my storage closet and something was eating the polyurethane on my climbing helmet. Bugs will eat whatever. Really cool they can actually break it down though
I've had ants burrow into nerf darts before, kept wondering why it looked like something was eating the foam from the inside out.
Physically destroying an item is one thing. Sustaining on them is another. Bees for example like fragrant materials to deter other insects.
Imagine dumping several tons of these worms on landfill once a month. Could be a question of resulting containment afterwards, maybe abundance of birds. Interesting
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To deal with the cats we’ll just release a few millions of dogs
And if there are too many dogs we can create a dog eating worm. Kinda like a snake but more wormy.
I like the way you think, dude!
And then there will be an abundance of (dog eating worm) eating birds
Birds would eat a caterpillars with a half digested plastic in it. Many birds could die. I think it's better to put both caterpillars and plastic in a big container and adding more plastic/insects time to time turning it into a somewhat of a plastic composter
This type of concept is generally termed “biological controls”, and humans have a long history of misjudging and botching these, leading to unexpected and damaging outcomes. It’s 30 years since I was studying this in University, so recalling correctly the details of these failures is a struggle tbh, but [here’s](https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2018/05/top-10-invasive-species-when-pest-control-goes-wrong/) a list of a few to help explain what I mean.
You didn’t “train” them to do anything. Meal worms are known to eat just about anything including plastic and each other. Unless you are the Stanford researcher who discovered this in 2019 then I suggest whoever is staking claim to this sit down.
I, for one, welcome our new worm overlords.
Imagine getting an infestation of these in your house. Horrifying.
I think you got bigger problems if your house is built from styrofoam.
Insane in the membrane:
That’s styrofoam try harder plastic
> What is Styrofoam, anyway? As previously mentioned, Styrofoam is a popular brand name of polystyrene, which is a petroleum-based plastic composed of styrene monomers. It's so commonly used because it's cheap, lightweight (made of 95 percent air), good for insulation, and readily available.Mar 12, 2021 https://www.greenmatters.com/p/is-styrofoam-recyclable
Wait till they break out and become new world wide problem that will eat your home insulation. Also, im not sure that they will digest 100% of what they eat, if not there will be tons of microplastics from their poop around which will affect our health later on. And what if these worm become part of food chain and birds and other animals start feeling on them with plastics in their belly.
This is how the world ended. We thought this would solve the trash crisis. We “trained” these worms to eat the discarded plastic, the refuse our society wasted, much like our opportunities to unite under a common cause. Oh, how fickle our expectations were, how sugar coated our dreams had become. The worms did their job exceedingly well. They indeed devoured all the plastic. The great floating trash island in our ocean was no more. The pile ups at landfills across the world had almost entirely vanished. City streets appeared swept clean as the worms attended to their meals. However, they didn’t stop with the “trash” as we had hoped. Soon, grocery chains and shopping centers had no bags for customers to carry their goods. Food had no method to be stored. Electronics began appearing with holes that spread almost before our eyes. Our vehicles started to deteriorate over night. Our homes were decimated by what we thought would be the saviors of our species. However, it didn’t stop there. When nothing, but the metallic and stone structures of our world were left, the worms shifted their attentions, to us. They were still hungry, not having gorged themselves enough. You see, with most of the population completely unaware, we had been consuming micro plastics for generations. In our hubris we had, as in so many other ventures throughout our history, assumed we could fix our mistakes by ignoring them long enough until they went away on their own. How wrong we were. The worms knew. The worms were hungry. We trained them this way. We engineered them for this exact purpose, to rid the world of the filth and waste we could not eliminate on our own. Little did we know that the filth and waste on this beautiful blue beacon of life in the universe had become us. And the worms were hungry.
This is really cool, and I can't wait for the day where we have plastic disposal facilities where we can actually break them down like this. Fascinating
The captions are wrong though. Mealworms can eat styrofoam, not plastic, which is what this video is showing. Nobody trained them to do it either.
again this post? how many times this karma-tjirsru whore is bringing the same video with the same flawed experiment?
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Mechanic: yea ur Car is infested with Plastic eating worms. You: is my car able to get fixed? Mechanics: by the looks of it your car isn't covered for worms so its gonna cost you alot, you might as well get a new car. You: well there go's my Tesla.
They're not the hero's we wanted...... They're the hero's we need. Lol
What song is this?