• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Very Hungry “Plastivore” Caterpillars Get Fat From Eating Plastic

July 8, 2025 by Deborah Bloomfield

Why wasn’t this ever mentioned in The Very Hungry Caterpillar? It turns out, some caterpillars aren’t content with eating through apples, salami, and a piece of cherry pie – they’re insatiable gluttons of plastic bags too.

The caterpillars of the greater wax moth (Galleria mellonella), known as waxworms, are one of the few animals that can eat and degrade polyethylene, a chemically resilient material that can take decades, if not centuries, to fully degrade in the natural environment.

The plastic-munching abilities of waxworms were first discovered in 2017, but a new study has taken a deeper look at how the consumption of plastic affects their health. By doing so, the researchers hope to uncover whether these hungry caterpillars have the potential to be used as tools in plastic clean-up operations.

“Around 2,000 waxworms can break down an entire polyethylene bag in as little as 24 hours, although we believe that co-supplementation with feeding stimulants like sugars can reduce the number of worms considerably,” Dr Bryan Cassone, a Professor of Insect Pest and Vector Biology in the Department of Biology at Brandon University in Canada, said in a statement.

“However, understanding the biological mechanisms and consequences on fitness associated with plastic biodegradation is key to using waxworms for large-scale plastic remediation,” explained Cassone.

The waxworms can degrade plastic thanks to two enzymes in their saliva that oxidize and depolymerize the plastic. It’s believed they evolved these unique chemical tools because they live and grow in beehives where they feed on beeswax, a substance chemically similar to plastic.

In the new research, scientists have shown that the waxworm has also developed a metabolic process that breaks down the plastics into lipids and stores them as body fat. 

“This is similar to us eating steak – if we consume too much saturated and unsaturated fat, it becomes stored in adipose tissue as lipid reserves, rather than being used as energy,” said Cassone.

However, a diet of solely plastic isn’t the healthiest, and it certainly won’t guarantee the caterpillars a long, happy life. Cassone commented: “They do not survive more than a few days on a plastic-only diet and they lose considerable mass.”

In other words, simply chucking waxworms onto islands of plastic trash isn’t going to be a viable solution to pollution in the long term. Nevertheless, the researchers believe they’ve identified a few promising ways these caterpillars could still play a role in tackling the plastic crisis.

“Firstly, we could mass rear waxworms on a co-supplemented polyethylene diet as part of a circular economy. Secondly, we could explore the re-engineering of the plastic biodegradation pathway outside the animal,” said Cassone.

Additionally, the large-scale production of waxworms could build up a significant surplus of insect biomass, which could be used for commercial fish food.

Who knows, perhaps the plastic floating in Earth’s oceans could end up being processed by caterpillars, then fed back to the fish it once threatened. And so, the circle of life continues! 

The new research is being presented at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Antwerp on July 8, 2025.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Audi launches its newest EV, the 2022 Q4 e-tron SUV
  2. Dinosaur Prints Found Under Restaurant Table Confirmed As 100 Million Years Old
  3. Archax: Japanese Engineers Make Transformer Robot That Actually Works
  4. How Do We Know There Is Anything Beyond The Observable Universe?

Source Link: Very Hungry "Plastivore" Caterpillars Get Fat From Eating Plastic

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • What NASA’s Galileo Spacecraft Saw As It Plunged Into Jupiter
  • Very Hungry “Plastivore” Caterpillars Get Fat From Eating Plastic
  • “Nobody Expected This”: Earth’s Rotation Will Speed Up Tomorrow, Bucking The Downward Trend
  • Chimps Are Sticking Grass In Their Ears And Rears As They Embrace “Pointless” Fad
  • Hui Te Rangiora: Old Māori Legend Suggests They May Have Discovered Antarctica 1,000 Years Before Europeans
  • “Potential Impact On Saturn”: Astronomers Appeal For Help As Video Appears To Show Object Hitting The Gas Giant
  • What Is Prosopometamorphopsia? The “Exceedingly Rare” Condition That Made A Patient See Faces As Dragons
  • Are We In An Enormous Void? It Could Explain What’s Wrong With Our Model Of The Universe
  • Woylies Boing Back Into Western Australia Thanks To Groundbreaking Wildlife Project
  • North America’s Oldest Pterosaur And Turtle Fossils Found In Arizona’s Petrified Forest
  • Proposed “Dark Dwarfs” Near The Galactic Center Could Reveal The Nature Of Dark Matter
  • Watch: 18-Kilometer-High Ash Cloud Looms Over Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki After “Explosive” Eruption
  • “ShipGoo001”: Mystery Of Entirely New Lifeform Discovered Coating A Great Lakes Ship
  • Rare White Humpback Whale Calf Filmed By Drone Off Australia’s East Coast
  • Who Was Buried At Cave Of Salome: A Female Disciple, Jesus’ Midwife, Or A Princess?
  • “Hidden” Changes To US Health Data Swapping “Gender” For “Sex” Spark Fears For Public Trust
  • Easter Island Was Never As Isolated As We Thought – Study Puts That “Strange Argument” To Bed
  • If Birds Are Dinosaurs, Why Are None As Big As T. Rexes?
  • Psychologists Demonstrate Illusion That Could Be Screwing Up Our Perception Of Time
  • Why Are So Many Enormous Roman Shoes Being Discovered At Hadrian’s Wall?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version