Insects rank high among humankind’s go-to creatures for strangeness: Think movie monster inspirations or extreme biophysics (SN: 11/7/22). So of course scientists have already started testing insect willingness and ability to eat, of all things, plastic.
A new experiment sprinkles a dose of reality on just how effective this strategy might be in preventing the planet from drowning in plastics. It would take 100 mealworms 138 days, or about 4.5 months, to eat just one disposable COVID-era face mask, ecologist Michelle Tseng and colleagues calculate December 4 in Biology Letters.
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