A seagull that always wanted to eat some fries swallowed a cell phone one day

There’s a popular cartoon you must have seen: The seagull’s ideal in life is just to get some French fries at the dock.

I'll get some fries at the dock later! From the comic series What Bad Could I Be? | Joshua Barkman

Seagulls are highly opportunistic, meaning they eat whatever they see . Fish, wild fruit (although seagulls usually eat meat, they can also eat vegetables) , rabbits, bird eggs, and of course, French fries on the pier, all become delicious meals for them. In addition, although seagulls are not birds of prey, they have strong swallowing ability** and can even swallow large prey such as small birds and baby rabbits .

When these two are combined, they can lead to surprising results. For example, have you ever seen a seagull eating a cell phone ?

When birds eat something that is difficult to digest, they will vomit it out in a ball called a pellet . By analyzing the pellets, we can know what the birds have eaten. An article published in the Dutch journal Sula in 2008 studied 3,876 pellets of herring gulls Larus argentatus and lesser black-backed gulls L. fuscus, and found that there were many things that should not be eaten.

There were all kinds of food packaging in the food pellets, which was not surprising; there was also a squid-shaped bait , which the seagull mistook for a squid, which was also expected. But some things were still too outrageous. One seagull vomited a medal , even the ribbon was intact, and another seagull vomited 16 toy soldiers . The most amazing seagull vomited a complete mobile phone , the model of which was Sony Ericsson W610.

The seagull eating the phone is more than just a joke, it's a sign of the growing impact that human-made objects are having on nature . Whether the phone was picked up from a garbage dump or was snatched from someone's hand as a french fry, it certainly wasn't good for the seagull's health.

The illustrations in this article are not scientific illustrations but have undergone certain artistic processing.

Comic script: Calendar Girl

Scientific review: Species Calendar Team

Painting: Chen Pupu

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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