The study used social media and photo-sharing websites
I am curious what kind of pictures they used; I could imagine that if you see a hermit crab with plastic you would take a picture of it, which could lead to misleading results. On the other hand, if the crabs were just in the background, this would not be the case.
Hermit crabs all over the world, which scavenge shells as armour for their bodies, are turning increasingly to plastic waste instead.
The study used social media and photo-sharing websites, as one of the researchers Marta Szulkin, an urban ecologist from the University of Warsaw, explained: "We started to notice something completely out of the ordinary.
"Instead of being adorned with a beautiful snail shell, which is what we're used to seeing - they would have a red plastic bottle cap on their back or piece of light bulb."
"According to our calculations, 10 out of the 16 species of land hermit crabs in the world use this type of shelter and it's been observed in all tropical regions of the Earth," Prof Szulkin explained.
What we don't know is how much the element of novelty might affect them - and whether the crabs will fight over artificial plastic shells," explained Prof Szulkin.
Mark Miodownik, who is professor of materials and society at University College London told the BBC that there was a lesson for humans in these images.
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