It's perhaps no surprise, then, that a loggerhead turtle was once found with 67 pieces of plastic inside its system. If an animal eats plastic, it's likely it could starve from the inside ...

But typically the consumption of plastic just leads to chronic, unrelenting hunger. Some animals now live in a world of plastics—like these hyenas scavenging at a landfill in Harar, Ethiopia.

Birds often mistake shredded plastic bags for food, filling their stomachs with toxic debris. For hungry sea turtles, it's nearly impossible to distinguish between jellyfish and floating plastic ...