A Beautiful Kaleidoscope Of Plastic - Found Inside An Albatross!

While the picture above looks like an attractive collection of everyday things and not particularly dangerous - they can be, especially when ingested by unsuspecting birds, who mistake it for food.

Scientists found all these items inside the stomach of a dead Albatross found on Kure Atoll, one of the remote Hawaiian Islands. They believe that the bird starved to death, thanks to the amount of indigestable plastic he had consumed over time.

Albatross birds are known to go long distances in search of food for their families and researchers believe that a lot of them fly thousands of miles all the way to the area known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Discovered accidently by a sailor in 1997, it is an area in the ocean which has over tons of garbage floating around, some at unreachable depths, all accumulated thanks to human carelessness and the way the ocean currents flow.

All attempts to clean it up have been futile, because there are so many tiny pieces and more are added every day. Meanwhile, the area has been the bane for birds, who mistake the brightly colored plastic pieces for food and gobble them up.

Scientists say that just two ounces of ingested plastic can causes all kinds of problems like starvation and dehydration, which results in killing them.

So the next time you discard a plastic knick-knack, think carefully and be sure to try and recycle it if you can - for every time you do that, you may have helped save a bird!

sources: Dailymail.co.uk