According to this article in Quartz , the wax worm, a caterpillar typically used for fishing bait and known for damaging beehives by eating their wax comb, has now been observed munching on a different material: plastic bags! A 100 such worms can chew through a polyethylene shopping bag — the kind that people discard at a rate of 1 trillion per year globally — in around 40 minutes.
Not only do these worms chew, they also digest the plastic, according to researchers at Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria in Spain. This could mean great news for Earth, which is drowning in plastic items. Click to read more.