Corals eat plastic because they like the taste

For years, scientists thought corals accidentally ate the plastic debris that washed into their waters because they mistakenly took them for prey. But a new study from Duke University shows this is not the case: the plastic just tastes good.

Just like humans, corals are drawn to food that is bad for them, it would seem. The researchers tested corals they had collected off the North Carolina coast, by giving them a variety of options to eat, including bits of sand and plastic.

The plastic can’t be mistaken for prey because coral don’t have eyes, so they have no way of seeing what they are about to eat. The researchers think some of the chemicals found on the plastic might be making it taste nice to the coral.

While corals might like the taste of plastic, it does not mean it is good for them to consume it. Plastic is almost completely indigestible, so it causes blockages, create a false sense of being full, or reduce the energy reserves in animals that eat it. “About 8% of the plastic that coral polyps in our study ingested was still stuck in their guts after 24 hours,” says Allen.


“Ultimately, the hope is that if we can manufacture plastic so it unintentionally tastes good to these animals, we might also be able to manufacture it so it intentionally tastes bad,” Seymour says. “That could significantly help reduce the threat these microplastics pose.”

Don't Pet the Puppies in Chernobyl

In 1986, the residents of Chernobyl were forced to flee their homes when the town’s nuclear power plant turned into a disaster zone. The area of Ukraine has been without a permanent human population ever since, but that doesn’t mean it’s empty. The landscape is teeming with insects, plant life, and even radioactive puppies descended from the house pets that were abandoned there 31 years ago.

A new mini documentary from Cloth Map explores the lives of some of Chernobyl’s cutest occupants. In the “Puppies of Chernobyl,” the tiny animals can be seen playing, wagging their tails, and running around just like domesticated dogs. Though the stray dogs tend to gather around places with the most tourist activity, like Chernobyl’s canteen, contact between humans and puppies is discouraged. As host Drew Scanlon explains in the video below, “Visitors are advised not to touch animals in the exclusion zone because they could carry radioactive particles in their fur.”

According to Newsweek, the radioactivity goes even deeper than that. When the American nonprofit Clean Futures Fund surveyed dogs in the exclusion zone, they found pockets of radioisotopes in their bones. The organization has set up a spay and neuter clinic nearby to keep the line of Chernobyl dogs from proliferating.

Adopt a Pet from ARL

At the Animal Rescue League of Boston (ARL), our goal is for animals to be safe and healthy where they belong, in homes and out of shelters.

No matter how they came to the shelter – through a law enforcement case such as a hoarding situation, as a stray brought in by a kind citizen or an animal control officer, or when an owner passes away – cats, dogs, birds, rabbits, and even pot-bellied pigs are treated with kindness and compassion.

Every animal that comes through our doors is immediately provided with extraordinary medical care by our Shelter Veterinary Medicine team.

While most shelters put an emphasis on physical care, we at the ARL know that an animal’s mental and emotional well-being is equally as important. Each animal participates in our unique Shelter Behavior and Enrichment program to not only make them happy and comfortable while they’re in our shelter, but also prepare them for life in their future home.

When you adopt a pet from one of our shelters in Boston, Brewster, or Dedham, you not only give a homeless animal a safe and loving place to live, but also save two lives: the animal you adopt and the animal who can take its place.

Protecting the Leatherbacks

Did you know that a male leatherback sea turtle, once it first heads to sea, never returns to land, while the female returns to her place of birth every year to lay hundreds of eggs each nesting season?!

We are fortunate in our small twin-island state that these incredible giants, after swimming thousands of miles, still visit our shores. Unfortunately, however, they face numerous threats upon arrival here: illegal poaching, entanglement in fishing nets and mistreatment by humans. When one thinks of it, it is a scary place for an animal that is simply looking for a safe nesting ground.

I admire the work of many local groups and individuals—including Michael James— who dedicate their lives to protecting our beautiful sea turtles. “Yankee”, as James is known by the Manzanilla community where he was born and raised, lived his entire life near the sea. His love for animals has inspired him to protect the leatherback sea turtles which he has been quite fond of since he was a little boy. Growing up on the beach, not only did he look out for the popular leatherbacks, but other sea turtle species including the green and hawksbill turtles.

I commend this most humble villager for devoting over 30 years of his life to carrying out both daytime and night-time patrols daily, together with other villagers, to ensure the nesting turtles and their hatchlings are safe.

PETA Pushes the EPA to Reduce Animal Tests—and Animals Win!

Last year, with strong bipartisan support, Congress amended federal government legislation regulating toxic chemicals for the first time in 40 years by passing the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21^st Century Act. As a result of the involvement of animal-protection organizations, including PETA, the legislation directs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reduce and replace the use of animals in chemical testing.

Yet the battle to save animals continues. Earlier this year, the EPA attempted to circumvent the requirements of the Lautenberg Act by broadly interpreting a requirement to determine whether new chemicals present unreasonable risks to health or the environment to mean that there must not be a risk under even the most unlikely of circumstances. This would obviously be impossible to determine, even if an endless number of animals died in chemical tests.
Further, the agency proposed a frightening “pre-prioritization” scheme that would have allowed the agency to require extensive animal testing for any or all of the 85,000 chemicals already in commerce, without opportunity for stakeholder input.
PETA repeatedly pressed the EPA to return to the agency’s previous policy of considering only the intended uses of chemicals and to remove or amend the pre-prioritization plan so that all existing information can be taken into account before requiring additional testing. Our scientists testified in public meetings, submitted extensive technical comments, and wrote to both the EPA Administrator and to the Office of Management and Budget.
Thankfully, the EPA listened to our concerns and to those of other stakeholders and deleted the controversial pre-prioritization phase. And it returned to its previous policy of focusing on the intended uses of chemicals and requiring companies to notify it before using chemicals in new ways.
It also reaffirmed its responsibility to reduce and replace animal testing and to use a stepwise approach to information gathering that emphasizes using already available data on hazard and exposure risks.

These developments will prevent an untold number of animals from suffering in deadly chemical tests. They comply with our legislators’ intent in passing the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act and will better protect public health by applying more thoughtful testing strategies. For our part, we will continue to work with government agencies and legislators to drive real change for animals.

Relocating Australian tortoise sets controversial precedent

As long as it has been known to science, the diminutive western swamp tortoise has been in peril. By the time it was formally named in 1901—using a decades-old museum specimen—Pseudemydura umbrina was presumed extinct. And since it was rediscovered in the 1950s, biologists have struggled to protect it from the twin threats of habitat loss and introduced predators, which drove its numbers to bottom out at just 30 individuals in the 1980s. Now that climate change poses an even more urgent threat to the endangered tortoise, biologists have a controversial plan to safeguard its future—by moving it to new sites outside of its known historical range. The translocation, which took place today, makes the tortoise the first vertebrate to be deliberately relocated because of climate change.

The yearlong trial, several years in the planning, will track 12 captively bred juvenile tortoises released to each of two sites roughly 250 kilometers south of their native habitat on the outskirts of Perth, Australia. Although the sites aren’t ideal for the tortoises now, detailed modeling of rainfall, temperature, swamp hydrology, and tortoise biology predict they will be in half a century.

For the western swamp tortoise, whose numbers in the wild are now estimated at just 50 breeding adults, declining rainfall is the primary concern. The 15-centimeter-long tortoises feed when rains fill swampy habitats in winter, and then enter a state of dormancy known as estivation when the swamps dry out to clay pans in the late spring or early summer. The less rain in winter, the more likely the hatchlings and juveniles will starve before the next winter rains arrive. Swamps that were wet for 5 to 7 months of the year in the 1960s are now often dry for most of the year, and rainfall is set to decline further in the future. Hemmed in by urban sprawl and agricultural land, the tortoises can’t up and move, either. “It’s a double whammy,” says conservation physiologist Nicola Mitchell from the University of Western Australia in Perth, who is leading the trial.