Creative1 Crabs有創(chuàng)造力的螃蟹

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Plastic is everywhere. According to the United Nations， enough plastic wasteto fill 2，000 garbage trucks is dumped2 into waterways such as oceans， rivers， andlakes each day. There’s plastic litter at the bottom of the ocean and on top ofMount Everest.

Now plastic has been found in another surprising place： on the backs of hermit crabs3. According to a study published4 in February in the journal Science of the Total Environment， hermit crabs are using plastic litter as shells.

Zuzanna Jagiello is a scientist at the University of Warsaw， in Poland. She’sthe study’s lead author5. “For me， a hermit crab in a plastic shell could be anicon of our times，”Jagiello told TIME for Kids .“They don’t have homes， so theyuse rubbish.”Jagiello studies the Anthropocene6 age. That’s the geologic7 agewe’re in now. Scientists think of it as the time when human activity has had amajor impact8 on the environment. Hermit crabs using plastic waste as shells isone example of that impact.

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Hermit crabs are small， soft-bodied crabs that live near oceans. To protectthemselves from predators9， the crabs always wear seashells that have been leftbehind by dead sea snails10.

According to February’s study， at least 386 hermit crabs have been writtendown wearing garbage11. Of the world’s 16 kinds of hermit crabs that live onland， 10 have been seen wearing garbage. Nearly nine out of every 10 of thosecrabs were wearing plastic waste， such as bottle caps. The others wore glass or metal12， such as broken lightbulbs13 or soda cans14.

Jagiello says that she and her team first learned about hermit crabs wearinggarbage when they noticed photos of them postedonline. They decided to learn more bydoing research.

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