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Bees Are Building Nests With Our Waste Plastic
Daniel_Stuckey writes "In a paper published in the Ecological Society of America's journal Ecosphere, researchers from York University and the University of Guelph in Canada explained that while plastic waste has previously been shown to have devastating impacts on the environment, less attention has been given to the resourcefulness of species in the face of their changing surroundings. "Plastic waste pervades the global landscape," they wrote. "Although adverse impacts on both species and ecosystems have been documented, there are few observations of behavioral flexibility and adaptation in species, especially insects, to increasingly plastic-rich environments.""
"If it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”
Plastic asshole.”
The plastic microparticles will inevitably appear in our honey. The filtration currently performed on honey is mainly for visual appearance,
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
The bees aren't alone, I've seen plastic, ribbons, string, mylar, and cigarette butts incorporated into bird nests. Crows in fact seem to deliberately incorporate cigarette butts into their nests to exterminate pests.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The plastic microparticles will inevitably appear in our honey.
In order to make plastic "Plastic" many types of chemicals were used. Some of the chemicals make the plastic "elastic", while some others make them tough, or heat resistant, or whatever characteristics the end-product form of plastic is supposed to be.
Some of those chemicals, when enter our bodies, can mimic the effect of Estrogen ( http://www.fastcompany.com/173... ) and mess up our body's hormonal balances.
Those insects might be resourceful, but the same estrogen mimicking chemical could also mess up the bee's biology too.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Bees love decorating their house with plastic garbage too? How long before we get a site dedicated to white-trash bees
Monstar L
I wonder whether all the chemicals in various plastics could be responsible for colony collapse in bees. What happens if they're making their homes out of materials that are toxic to them?
The Wombles have been doing this for years.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
help the bees, drop that plastic bag!
One of the axioms of ecosystem change is that it favours opportunistic species over slowly-adapting ones. Most opportunistic species are known as pests because their opportunism is incompatible with our preference for controlled environments (weeds finding niches in gardens, rats finding niches in buildings) but it'd be interesting to speculate about opportunists we actually like.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
"The study even suggested that those species that adapt to increasingly plastic environments might have an advantage in urban areas over those that don’t "
Roaches, Rats, Pigeons... They only realized that now??
as it is eaten so it shall pass
The fundamental fact about plastic is that it is, well, plastic. Suppose we research the optimum shapes and sizes for bee-friendly plastic bits, and then intentionally set these out for their use? Bonus points for making it biodegradable over time or under specific environmental conditions, such as cold winter weather.
I have observed great adaptation as well: Turtle doves (streptopelia turtur) feeding nutritious tiny styrofoam pieces to their young.
Bees evolve to use plastic.
The evolved bees choke out the other bees.
Man devises a plastic substitute.
The evolved bees die.
Food doesn't get pollinated.
Mass starvation.
What a tragedy.
Given the know dangers of Bisphenol A in plastic. I wonder if this has any connection with Colony collapse disorder
As an engineer who believes in responsible use of plastics, I drink from disposable PET plastic water bottles all the time, I eat my food stored in plastic containers, I often eat my food on a plastic coated paper plate. The only thing I do not do is cook with plastic or re-heat food in plastic containers. I want all of the enviro-morons to be forced into concentration camps and live for a year without plastic of any kind. Most of them would die from infection, disease, food poisoning, chemical burns, and a myriad of other ways that plastic makes our lives better in food storage, safety, medical care etc. We can take their kids away and teach them about reality for a year; they shouldn't have to suffer from the stupidity of their parents.
As a side note, the planet is not covered in plastic waste; plastic is highly recycled, and nearly all plastic breaks down in UV light (i.e. sunlight) over less than a year. Plastic does last a lot longer when it is buried, but lets face reality. We are taking oil, a toxic substance that occurs NATURALLY ALL OVER THE PLANET and we are capturing it in an inert form and burying it, capturing it for centuries in a form that frankly no one gives a shit about (plastic is pretty much safe in all of it's consumer forms, especially when buried). The people who freak out about the trace chemicals from plastic lack even a basic understanding of chemical behavior or the fact that we are exposed to a million toxins every day, and it is all about the concentration of the exposure and the strength of the toxin together. The same rules of exposure work for every form of life on the planet with varying toxicity for different forms of life.
As far as the colony collapse disorder, that has been pretty well nailed down as synergistic interaction between a fungus and a parasite that together are fatal for colonies. If bee keepers would stop bringing all of their colonies together for mega-orchards and transmitting the diseases between colonies, the epidemic would subside. They are also working to treat the causes. Interestingly, Africanized bees are immune to the maladies, so the world will not end, but rather you will not want to screw with bees if the Africanized strain takes over.
Bees seem to be smarter than some animals. Especially the ones stupid enough to feed plastic to their offspring. Let's let natural selection take its course.
while
Unless you like the smell of burning polyurethane ...
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.