News

If birds were humans

Published on
November 23, 2016

In the media, and for educational purposes, we often make a comparison between birds and humans. If one imagines a Northern Fulmar of the size (body mass) of a human, the contents of its stomach can be multiplied by about a hundred to visualize what is going on.

From that perspective, the human sized fulmar from the North sea flies around with on average a lunchbox full of plastic in its stomach. We now distribute our information flyer on this issue in three languages. The photographs may be downloaded separately.

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Dutch language: Als vogels mensen waren...
English language: If birds were humans...
German language: Wenn Vögel Menschen wären...

Translation to a human perspective To the left of the tweezers is the average quantity of plastic in stomachs of fulmars in the North Sea (0.31 gram plastic in different categories); to the right of the tweezers, this same quantity has been translated to represent the stomach content of a fulmar at human body size (31 gram plastic; top row from left to right: sheets, fragments and threadlike plastics with foamed plastics and industrial granular plastics below)
Translation to a human perspective To the left of the tweezers is the average quantity of plastic in stomachs of fulmars in the North Sea (0.31 gram plastic in different categories); to the right of the tweezers, this same quantity has been translated to represent the stomach content of a fulmar at human body size (31 gram plastic; top row from left to right: sheets, fragments and threadlike plastics with foamed plastics and industrial granular plastics below)
An extreme stomach content
An extreme stomach content
An ± average stomach content
An ± average stomach content