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Comment by harryf | Hacker News Reader

Prediction: evolution will solve what humans are incapable of. That means species of fish evolving that specializes in eating plastic. Kinda makes sense. While plastic isn't bio-degradeable in the normal sense, perhaps the digestive system of a specialized fish will succeed. After all there is an abundance.

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Yes, the bigger worry is that evolution will solve humans, but thankfully nature is already working on a cure for plastics[0].

[0] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chow-down-plastic-e...

The evolutionary pressure to cause a mutated, plastic-eating fish to outcompete non-plastic-eating fish would suggest that there would be areas where plastic was more abundant that the other things (plankton, mostly) that fish normally feed on, i.e. other fish would be at a disadvantage because they couldn't process plastic. That's a pretty dire scenario for humans.

Not necessarily. A lot of the flora and fauna in the New World developed somewhat independently from that in the old one. So we might have these new species evolve in regions of the oceans where the plastic is more abundant.

There are some microbe that breaks down plastic. Maybe some sea life will form a symboitic relationship with with.

That's an interesting prediction. From what I can remember from a previous HN article, there is a bacterial that already eats plastics. How long would such a evolutionary step take place, I wonder?

Not really. Evolution doesn't stop. And living things adapt to new circumstances all the time.

Evolution was so last eon. We've got CRISPR now. :D

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