These Birds Are So Stuffed With Plastic, You Can Hear Them Crunch

Squeaky stuffed animals are endearing. But when the animal is a real baby bird and its stomach makes crunching noises from all the plastic it has ingested, the endearment quickly turns into a dystopian nightmare. This, however, is not happening in a faraway dystopia. Scientists from the Adrift Lab ocean research group were horrified to discover “crunchy birds” on Australia’s UNESCO World Heritage-listed Lord Howe Island. What’s more, on their first day of fieldwork on the island this year, the researchers found a dead baby bird that had ingested 778 pieces of plastic, breaking the lab’s 15-year record for the greatest amount of plastic ingested by a single bird—and by a long shot. “This year we decided we’re no longer going to say to each other ‘it can’t possibly get worse’ because each year it just does,” the researchers wrote in an Adrift Lab news release. “Terms like ‘unprecedented’ and ‘horrific’ really don’t do it justice. As scientists on the front lines of the environment/poll ... Read full article.