Let’s love worms – waxworms, in particular! Scientists now think they can use them to save the earth!

Howdy all! It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I kinda didn’t feel like writing, due in part from this infatuation-fueled diet I’m on, and because I honestly just got lazy. (More on the diet later – I’m writing a long post about it and haven’t finished it yet.) Well, here I am!

So I went digging through Google news for something interesting – and it looks like caterpillars are in! I already felt gross clicking on the article, but by the time I finished reading it, I was smiling visibly and wanted to hop for joy.

It turns out that there are these special caterpillars that like to live dangerously and nest in beehives – talk about living on the edge, right? They’re called waxworms – the ones that mature into greater wax moths. They live off of eating beeswax, shed bee skins, and even bee cocoons. Beekeepers would call them pests – but they seem like good housekeepers to me! (I guess if they eat the beeswax, it could destroy the hive, though.)

But They Eat Plastic!

One beekeeper in Spain was clearing a beehive of these waxworms and placed them in a plastic baggie. She realized the caterpillars were eating their way through the baggie! She probably freaked out first, then realized this could be a good thing! She’s actually a researcher at some fancy institute in Spain where they make advances in medicine and biological sciences. Suffice to say, the waxworms’ plastic-devouring ability couldn’t have been discovered in better hands.

So she and the other researchers took the waxworms and studied them as they ate all sorts of plastics to their hearts content. But then they wanted to make sure they were really digesting the plastic, and not just chewing it up then pooping it out later. So, without hesitation, they smashed the poor little waxworms up to let out their digestive juices.

Imagine that? They act all nice and feed these waxworms, then a moment later cruelly pulverize them. Ugh. I felt for them when I read that. But it’s all for the good of the world, right?

After smearing the waxworm juice all over some plastic and running some analysis, they concluded that they did have compounds that were indeed breaking down the plastic.

Remember that plastic isn’t biodegradable – but these waxworms change all that! Now we don’t have to worry about throwing plastic in the trash or the recycling bin because these guys give the dump a way of breaking them down. It’s really good news! The environment gets a little bit more help.

You know what’s even better? If you keep these waxworms as a pet (not me, thanks), you can break down your own throwaway plastics and get antifreeze! That’s because they eat plastic and poop out ethylene glycol, which is the active ingredient in antifreeze. So not only do you have your own plastic-eating pet, but they give your car a free antifreeze refill for the winter.

But think about it – how far out are these worms? They must be hardcore if they eat plastic through one end and pump out antifreeze at the other end. Almost sounds scary.