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Even giant anteaters in remote Brazil have microplastics in their blood
Gemma Conroy is a freelance journalist in Mexico City and editor of Nature Briefing: Careers.
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Giant anteaters traipsing across Brazil's pristine wetlands and savannas have ingested traces of plastic pollutants. Credit: Sylvain Cordier/Gamma-Rapho via Getty
Some of Brazil’s wildlife have traces of plastic circulating in their blood — even if they live far from land used by humans, according to an analysis published on 11 November in Nature1.
Researchers measured the concentration of microplastics in the blood of 47 animals: 26 lowland tapirs (Tapirus terrestris) and 21 giant anteaters (Myrmecophaga tridactyla). The scientists found that, on average, the creatures carry similar levels of plastic to many humans — roughly 74 particles per millilitre of blood. The animals that lived closest to human infrastructure and waste-management facilities had the highest levels of microplastics in their blood.
But even those living more than 100 kilometres from a waste sites and 65 kilometres from human infrastructure showed traces of the pollutants. This indicates that plastics can reach wildlife living far from where the pollution originates, says study co-author Marcia de Almeida Monteiro Melo Ferraz, a conservation scientist at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan in Kelowna, Canada.
The findings are an important step to better understand how the particles impact wildlife, says Sofia Ya-Hsuan Liou, a geochemist at the National Taiwan University in Taipei.
Microplastics are tiny particles (smaller than five millimetres) with many different chemical compositions. They can travel through the environment in rainwater, rivers and the atmosphere. Although several studies have measured microplastics in wildlife, few have explored how the surrounding environment influences what animals ingest, says study co-author Michael Noonan, a quantitative ecologist at the University of British Columbia Okanagan.
To find out, Noonan, Ferraz and their colleagues collected and analysed blood samples from animals living across the Amazon rainforest, the Cerrado savanna and the huge and pristine Pantanal wetland between February 2021 and November 2022. The researchers also used GPS data to track the animals’ movements and their exposure to human footprint.
Ferraz, M. A. M. M. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11285-x (2026).