The women’s leader of the Xingu Indigenous Territory, the eldest daughter of one important tribal chief and the niece of another, Watatakalu Yawalapiti watched her family be devastated by Covid.
That they eat plastic – 07/10/2021 – Reinaldo José Lopes
ksuadminJuly 11, 2021 11
“I’m mad, I wanted so badly to eat a plastic bag,” read the caption of a meme I once saw, overlaid with a sea turtle cartoon that reminded me a little of the one from the “Finding Nemo” cartoon. Another symptom that online life has a frightening power to dehumanize us is that someone is willing to make fun of the internet when they know sea turtles are choking on the plastic floating in the oceans. Most importantly, the meme shows a downright pathological inability to understand the extent of the problem.
Morning Report today. We reviewed all the literature available on the topic, and we found from earthworms to African elephants, plastics in general, they have been widely consumed. What we found is that terrestrial species and freshwater species in the form of fish, they re understudied. The problem is more comprehensive than this.
Machovsky-Capuska co-wrote the report with project leader Robson Santos and Ryan Andrades of Brazil.
In it, they noted evolutionary traps such as how transparent plastics in the ocean mimic the appearance of jellyfish, the main food source for leatherback turtles. What the evidence suggests is that the animals are sort of stuck in what we call an evolutionary trap.