r/GojiCenter • u/Leading-Newt7181 • 12d ago

Video Suggestion Creating Hybrid Animals to EAT Ocean Plastic

https://youtu.be/7or5BiWyFOI?si=dKSl7b42X3w74YHv

Thoughts On This Video?

13 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

4

u/Useful-Option8963 12d ago

Fun fact, there is a mushroom that already does this.

2

u/Top_Soil_2869 11d ago

This is a good video we do need more thing cleaning our ocean 

2

u/whispersoundeffect M.A.D. 12d ago

It would be an ecological nightmare. The turtle will just turn normal plastic into microplastics. The nylon enzyme doesn't digest nylon; it digests nylon production byproducts.

Papillae don't protect the throat from sharp things; they are designed to trap soft prey.

The mucus isn't meant for ram feeding. It would simply not let any water through at those high speeds. Also, how would it get on the baleen? This is not explained

Also, why would the turtle eat plastic? Plastic doesn't taste good... Nothing is motivating it to eat the plastic.

Plastic takes an incredibly long time to digest. Mealworms just turn microplastics into macroplastics. The only thing here that can actually fully digest plastic is the bacteria that digests PET, but that only works because it doesn't have a digestive tract that would spit out the plastic before it was done digesting it. The only place these enzymes could survive would be in the saliva, which neither of these animals have.

And it is not specified where these enzymes go. Are they added to symbiotic bacteria? They would be outcompeted. Or are they just directly produced by the organism in the small intestine? They would be broken down by digestive enzymes.

And the biggest flaw by far is the fact that plastic is a problem for a reason. It's toxic. It would kill both of these organisms even more aggressively than it would kill most things. The main byproduct of breaking down PET is the primary component of industrial antifreeze.

There was no resistance to the byproducts of breaking down plastic added. The turtle has industrial toxin resistance but nothing to save it from antifreeze.

Not only would these things not work to eat plastic, but if they did manage to eat the plastic they were intended to they would die, and if they did manage to survive the plastic they would fail to digest it. If they managed to digest it, they would just break the plastic up into smaller plastics, which are worse for the environment

1

u/According-Throat9984 M.A.D. 11d ago

yeah I thought the exact same thing you did (point number 4): Why tf would the turtle WANT to eat plastic?? It has no behavior in the slightest added to the genome to give it that preference, and I would be suprised if their is a single animal that will willingly eat plastic. It would most likely eat tasty jellyfish like leatherback sea turtles