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Turtles have an unfortunate habit of devouring plastic objects floating in the sea.
海龜有一個壞習慣，就是吞食漂浮在海里的塑料制品。
These then get snared in their alimentary canals, cannot be broken down by the animals' digestive enzymes and may ultimately kill them.
然后這些東西會陷入消化道，無法被動物的消化酶分解，并最終可能致死。
It is widely assumed that this penchant for plastics is a matter of mistaken identity.
人們普遍認為，這種對塑料的嗜好是一種錯誤的識別。
Drifting plastic bags, for instance, look similar to jellyfish, which many types of turtles love to eat.
例如，漂浮的塑料袋看起來就像許多海龜喜歡吃的水母。
Yet lots of plastic objects that end up inside turtles have no resemblance to jellyfish.
然而，海龜體內的許多塑料制品卻與水母毫無相似之處。
Joseph Pfaller of the University of Florida therefore suspects that something more complicated is going on.
因此，佛羅里達大學的Joseph Pfaller懷疑，更復雜的事情正在發生。
As he writes in Current Biology, he thinks that the odour of marine micro-organisms which colonise floating plastic objects induces turtles to feed.
他在《Current Biology》中寫道，海洋微生物附著在漂浮的塑料物體上，它們的氣味誘使海龜進食。
The idea that the smell of plastic flotsam might lure animals to their doom first emerged in 2016.
塑料垃圾的氣味可能會導致動物滅亡的想法最早出現在2016年。
Researchers at the University of California, Davis, noticed that certain chemicals, notably dimethyl sulphide,
加州大學戴維斯分校的研究人員注意到，某些化學物質，
which are released into the air by micro-organism-colonised plastics, are those which many seabirds sniff to track down food.
尤其是被微生物占領的塑料釋放到空氣中的二甲基硫化物，是許多海鳥用來尋找食物的。
These chemicals mark good places to hunt because they indicate an abundance of the algae
這些化學物質標記了捕食的好地方，因為它們表明在海洋食物鏈的底部
and bacteria that lie at the bottom of marine food chains. The researchers also found that birds
有大量的藻類和細菌。研究人員還發現，
which pursue their food in this way are five or six times more likely to eat plastic than those which do not.
以這種方式捕食的鳥類比不以這種方式捕食的鳥類吃塑料制品的可能性要大5到6倍。
Since turtles are known to break the surface periodically and sniff the air when navigating towards their feeding areas,
眾所周知，海龜在游向覓食區域時，會周期性地破開水面，并嗅空氣中的氣味。
Dr Pfaller theorised that they are following these same chemicals, and are likewise fooled into thinking that floating plastic objects are edible.
因此，Pfaller博士推斷，海龜也在遵循著這些相同的化學物質，而且同樣會誤以為漂浮的塑料物體是可以食用的。
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