Poor Turtles eat Plastic as it smells like ‘underwater food’, they choke and die

Are we dumb? Yes, we are. We are not referring to someone who cannot hear anything and have impairment with the ears. When we say ‘dumb’, it is not the physical dumbness that people have, we are talking about the ‘phycological dumbness’ that we have.

One of the most basic things that is being taught in schools is ‘cleanliness’. But how many of us are really keeping the surroundings clean? Hardly a few and it’s because of us, other living creatures are getting affected. This is why it is more important to throw waste in the garbage bin.

Man is the only living being on Earth that is created to think and dominate over the other voiceless creatures. We are so dumb that we cannot do anything good to restore the planet.

Credits: Public Domain

We are turning the surroundings dirty and yet we blame the government or politicians when the problem is actually ‘you’ in the first place. We have already turned the oceans from bad to worse and the plastics are now slowly eliminating marine life.

The plastics which we expel in oceans is not only a threat to aquatic creatures but for us too. In fact, we are indirectly writing a death note for ourselves.

As plastic is ruining life on the ground including underwater, we came across many heart-breaking videos of turtles who have consumed plastic. The innocent creatures consume plastic because it looks like food.

As per a study published in journal Current Biology, it is the aroma of plastic that deceives the poor turtle from consuming it.

Joseph Pfaller of the University of Florida, Gainesville, who is one of the leading authors of the study, “We were surprised that turtles responded to odours from bio-fouled plastic with the same intensity as their food. We expected them to respond to both to a greater extent than the control treatments, but the turtles know the smell of their food since they’ve been smelling and eating it in captivity for five months. I expected their responses to food to be stronger.”

He further added in a statement that “The plastic problem in the ocean is more complex than plastic bags that look like jellyfish or the errant straw stuck in a turtle’s nose. These are important and troubling pieces to the puzzle, and all plastics pose dangers to turtles.”