Chapter 4: Harmful Effects on Animals

Animals get critically harmed or killed because of plastic. Plastic pollution harms all kinds of animals, from terrestrial creatures, to bird species, to aquatic animals. Since plastic almost always makes its way into the ocean and other bodies of water, marine and aquatic animals are the most at risk for being harmed. These animals are the most negatively affected by plastic and continue to be threatened by it.

Plastic pollution causes animals to get tangled and stuck in the plastic waste. This causes injuries, drowning, and several other dangers. Animals also mistakenly eat plastic, thinking that its food, which causes them harm and kills them. This chapter discusses these risks in detail and the many different ways that plastic waste harms animals.

Entanglement

What is Entanglement?

Entanglment is when animals accidentally become stuck in plastic waste, and this is a global issue that causes the deaths of hundreds of thousands of animals a year. This includes sea turtles, dolphins, whales, seals, sea lions, and many more. Many whale species in particular are significantly affected by plastic entanglement, especially humpback whales, gray whales, and right whales. There are horrible effects on animals that get stuck in plastic. Some of these effects are reduced mobility, starvation, drowning, strangulation, suffocation, injuries, and an inability to move freely.

Why Do Animals Get Entangled in Litter?

Entanglement occurs by accident most times when litter gets caught on an animal or when an animal accidentally gets stuck in it without knowing. Some animals such as dolphins and sea turtles tend to be very curious and swim up to plastic litter to see what it is and play with it. These creatures do not know that these items are extremely harmful and dangerous to them.

Dangers Caused by Entanglement

When small marine mammals, such as dolphins, smaller whales, sea turtles, and seals, get entangled in heavy amounts of plastic, the heavy weight of the litter makes them unable to surface, causing them to drown. Larger whales are usually able to pull the litter up with them when they surface and are less likely to drown, but this can still cause exhaustion from carrying the heavy weight and can cause infection if the waste is sharp and cuts into their flesh. Entanglement also makes them more likely to be injured from vessel strikes because they’re too exhausted by the restrictive and heavy plastic to be able to dodge them.

Entangled animals become less capable of finding food and can have trouble eating due to them being restricted by the waste. Because of their weakened and injured condition, as well as their reduced mobility, entangled animals also become an easier target for predators and it’s much harder for them to escape.

Fishing Gear

Discarded fishing gear such as plastic fishing nets are common items that marine animals get stuck in. These fishing nets can be very sharp and cut into their flesh and can cause physical trauma and lethal infections. This can cause dolphins, whales, and fish to lose fins or tails and can cause other animals to lose limbs. This can also cause animals to become sick, disabled, and have a hard time swimming and escaping predators.

There are more than 340 species of animals that are victims of fishing gear entanglement. Some examples of these species are sea turtles, humpback whales, bottlenose dolphins, Hawaiian monk seals, brown pelicans, and many bird species. Many of these species are also endangered. It was discovered that every year, at least 136,000 whales, seals, sea lions, and other animals die from discarded and abandoned fishing gear. Balloons

Another particularly dangerous plastic pollutant are balloons. Even though releasing balloons is a very fun and festive way to celebrate special events, it’s also a very dangerous risk to birds and other animals who can accidentally get caught in the balloon’s remnants. Birds are often falling victim to getting entangled in the plastic from balloons. It can accidentally twist around their legs or head, causing them to get stuck. Animals also get tangled in the plastic balloon ribbons.

Keep in mind that what goes up eventually comes down. Balloon remnants are often found on beaches, where they tend to collect on the land. Many environmental organizations have been leading movements that aim to discourage and ban the practice of releasing of balloons.

Six-Pack Rings

Six-pack rings have received tons of backlash lately after seeing devastating sights of sea turtles and other animals stuck in them. Six-pack rings are a type of packaging manufacturers use to hold together packs of multiple beverages (usually soda cans or bottles). Avoid buying anything that comes in six-pack rings, but if you absolutely must, then make sure that you cut each of the rings before recycling or discarding them, so that animals can easily escaped from them if they get stuck.

Ingestion

What is Plastic Ingestion?

Plastic ingestion is when an animal accidentally eats plastic waste and debris. With the oceans and lands being full of plastic litter and microplastics, this happens all too often, harming and killing animals at an alarming rate.

Food? Why do Animals Ingest Plastic?

Unlike humans, wild animals do not have the ability to distinguish between what’s food and what’s not. To an animal, if a piece of litter looks, smells, tastes, or behaves like food, they assume that it must be food. Sometimes plastic waste can confuse animals by looking exactly like food to them. For example, plastic litter pieces that are red, pink, or brown can resemble shrimp. Species that eat jellyfish, such as ocean sunfish and sea turtles, often eat plastic bags and balloon ribbons, mistaking them to be jellyfish.

Yay! Food!

There are many animals that eat fish eggs, such as jellyfish, various fish species, and filter feeders. These animals try to eat tiny floating plastic beads and pieces, thinking that they’re fish eggs. Sometimes while hunting for food, these plastic pieces end up mixing with their actual food and can look completely indistinguishable to animals. The animals end up also accidentally eating the plastic pieces along with their food.

Another great example of this are seabirds that skim and fly right over the ocean surface with their beaks open to catch floating food. With the ocean being full of plastic debris floating around, these birds also end up accidentally eating tons of plastic. And because they cannot distinguish between what’s litter and what’s food, they do not realize that they have eaten something inedible and dangerous.

Plastic can also leach chemicals that smell like food and plastic debris can be covered with food, which can attract hungry animals who accidentally ingest the plastic, along with the food. Grazing animals on land, for example, cows, seagulls, and dogs, often fall victim to this.

How Does Ingesting Plastic Kill Animals?

Ingested plastic starts to accumulate in the stomach. This gives animals a false sense of feeling full and stops them from feeling hungry. As a result, this causes them to stop eating and they die from starvation. Large chunks of plastic can also block their gastrointestinal tract so plastic cannot be excreted. Furthermore, plastic leaches dangerous chemicals that can cause various types of harm if consumed, such as cancer, endocrine disruption, and reproductive harm. This also results in these chemicals entering the food chain as marine animals consume plastic. Other animals (and humans) may eat some of these creatures and that can cause them harm by indirectly consuming plastic through other animals.

Other Ways Plastics Harm Animals

Algae and plankton are common autotrophs, which are organisms that produce their own nutrients using carbon and sunlight. Microplastics and other waste collecting on top of the ocean’s surface blocks sunlight from reaching plankton and algae below the surface of the ocean. This threatens the algae and plankton communities which could change the entire food web.

This can cause animals that eat algae and plankton, such as turtles and certain fish, to have less food. If the populations of these animals decrease, there won’t be any food for higher predators, such as whales and sharks. This will also cause seafood to become less available for people and more expensive to buy.