Most of the plastic eaten by American vultures comes directly from waste from stores. Reported by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Since the mid-20th century, mankind has produced about 8.3 billion tons of plastic, with 380 million tons added to this mass each year, of which only 9% is recycled. Plastic garbage not only spoils the appearance of the environment, but also poses a danger to living things. They eat it, including animals, either with food or by mixing plastic with something edible. Scavengers are particularly at risk, as they regularly forage for food in landfills.
Hannah Partridge and her colleagues set out to track patterns in the plastic consumption of American ground trains.Coragyps atratus) are common vultures in North America. It turns out that the amount of plastic ingested largely depends on the habitat and above all the location of the retail outlets.
In total, the authors studied eight common roosts that typically house between 20 and 500 vultures. The authors collected a total of 1087 balls of undigested material vomited by vultures under the roosts.
It was determined that 60% of these granules contained plastic and constituted an average of 2.7% of the total mass. Other components included vegetation, soil, stones, animal remains, metal, fabric, paper, wood and glass. The authors were also able to identify the types of plastic materials using infrared spectroscopy.
Statistical analysis showed that the proportion of plastic mass increased strongly with increasing urban vegetation and increasing the density of food vendors within 20 km of a perch. According to scientists, vultures eat garbage directly from store-owned tanks or where stores display expired goods.
ancient biologists approvedthat the moths’ “tails” act as decoys for bats.