Microplastic exposure makes animals want to eat it more

Predators can learn to prefer the food taken contaminated with microphones, even if clean food is available. This behavior may have implications for food and health habits of the whole ecosystem, including people.

Researchers discovered this wish for plastic after studying eating habits in small roundworms called Nematodes (Caenorabditis Elegans) to many generations. If their usual food bacteria is offered, as well as the same germs contaminated with microphones, the first generation of nematods selected for clean replacement. However exposure to plastic foods in many generations changes their preferences.

“They actually began to prefer contaminated food,” as Song Lin Chua In Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Why do worms develop a taste for plastic? As creatures with no real vision, the nematods trust other senses to find their food, as smell. “Plastics can be part of the stains,” says Chua. After the long exposure, they could know microplastics “more like food” and chose to eat it, he said. She puts other small animals that depend on the scent of the victim can “confuse” the same way.

Chua pointed out that the behavior “is more informed” than a genetic mutation, and therefore can be returned. “It’s like something to taste,” he said, with the condition of someone’s ego for sugar. He said that, in theory, it can be returned to future generations, but it still contributes to further study.

As one of the most common types of animals in the world, Nematodes ‘dieters’ desires have many more implications for the health of their ecosystems. “Those interactions of something that eats others are important for recycling and changing different forms of object and strength,” as Lee Half In Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, calling the discovery “alarming”.

“It passes through the food chain,” says Chua, saying the behavior can make a kind of “ripple effect” that will also affect human diet. “Finally it will come back to us,” he said.