To some whales, a plastic bag may seem like dinner. Here’s why

So scientists tried to understand why they too consume so much plastic.

Like plastic, like prey

Deep-diving toothed whales, or odontocetes, vibrate their vocal lips below their blowholes to produce sound, which they then project through a fatty organ called a melon on their forehead. As sound reflects off objects in the dark, oils on the whales’ lower jaws direct the sound to their inner ears, allowing them to locate prey several hundred meters away.

“It starts with a click,” says research leader Greg MerrillPhD student in marine mammals at Duke University. But when a whale focuses, the clicks “become really fast, where they mix together and looks more like a buzz.“

For Study published in October Marine Pollution BulletinMerrill and his colleagues collected nine plastic items: bags, balloons, and other common trash found in whale guts off the coast of North Carolina. (See photos of animals wandering around a plastic world.)

It works from: Aboard the research vessel in May, the team arranged the pieces on a rig underneath the boat and hit them with sound waves at frequencies toothed whales use to hunt. They repeated the process on five dead squid bodies as well as five more dead squid bodies provided by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Squid beaks taken from the stomach of a stranded sperm whale.