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Albatross chicks die from eating plastic.

The adults feed the chicks by regurgitating food they have eaten at sea. If they take in plastics (which they do) then that is what the chicks get. Your second link graphically shows what happens.
 
Albatross aren't the only seabirds that ingest plastics. This document cites the North Sea fulmar as another example. A study in the Netherlands from 1982-2001 found that 98% of dead fulmars had plastics in their stomachs.

These birds essentially eat almost anything that floats and they do not necessarily go for colorful plastics by preference. For nearly all of the natural history of seabirds, floating plastic trash has not been part of their environment. Natural selection would not have favored birds that were highly discriminatory about what they picked from the surface. Maybe it will now, but maybe not before populations are lost or greatly reduced.

I think that this floating trash may not be randomly distributed in oceans because of human population centers and currents. Some regions may be at reduced risk because there is little or no floating plastics to be picked up.
 
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There was a documentary a while back showing the problems in a part of Hawaii, but I cannot remember which channel I watched it on, They beachcombed, and found many plastic items that had drifted in, so many cigarette lighters. And dead birds which they dissected and found items in their guts.

ETA I found this, it may have been the same, but not sure
http://www.messageinthewaves.com/
 
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DogB said:
From the look of the second link in the OP, it is now - big time.
Click to expand...

Some people wouldn't call that "natural selection" any more then they would call "selective breeding" natural selection. I'm not sure, personally.
 
I am so embarrassed to admit that I thought y'all meant "albatross chicks" in a vernacular way, like the girls that hang on your neck all drunk and you can't get rid of them when they're dancing. Albatross chicks.

I was sad to know that they die from eating plastic. I never fed them.... if metaphorically they die from meeting "plastic people" and their social behaviors are dead to them forever... well... maybe...
 
Has anybody else noticed that the main colours of the plastic seen in the stomach of the birds is red(ish) blue(ish) and white (from this link). Any thoughts on this? What is the staple diet of these birds?
 
Regurgitated mother vomit-food, apparently.

Oh wait, never mind. You're talking about bird-biology. I was talking about human mental psychology.
 
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BPScooter said:
Thinking more deeply, the red and blue and white are clearly indicating France.
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Why, you also have these 3 colors on the US flag :D

(yes, I'm French)

More seriously, when I was younger I was told that it was sea turtles who were suffocating after eating sea-floating plastic bags. To have sea birds also dying of it is not a very long stretch.
The reason advanced for turtles was that plastic bags are looking like jellyfishes.
 
bluesjnr said:
Has anybody else noticed that the main colours of the plastic seen in the stomach of the birds is red(ish) blue(ish) and white (from this link). Any thoughts on this? What is the staple diet of these birds?
Click to expand...

When I regurgitate there is always carrots - even when I haven't eaten any.:confused: Maybe it's a similar phenomenon.
 
Permit me to act as though I never said the things I just said on this thread, and request that you return to a thoroughly serious exchange about the sea-birds. The French people and language are first-rate, and if anyone tries to imply that I said otherwise, I will be forced to ignore such calumny.
 
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