A lab study conducted at Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada found that a group of 60 waxworms could devour more than 30 square centimeters of a plastic bag in less than a week. It shows that waxworms, which normally live in beehives and eat wax, also feast on polyethylene. They owe this ability to their intestinal microbes and excrete glycol, a form of alcohol, after a meal of plastics. While this doesn't mean that a bunch of caterpillars will end plastic pollution, researchers are more interested in a species of intestinal bacteria in the worms that can survive on plastic for more than a year as its only source of nutrients. Thus, they called the worms "plastivores."