There was a tendency for the average mass of ingested items to increase
with time in captivity (r2 = 0.126), suggesting that smaller
items were excreted.
Selective excretion of small plastic particles was
further supported by the average mass of hard plastic fragments removed
from the cloacas of live turtles being larger (14.0 ± 13.8 mg,
n = 39) than items removed from dead animals (8.5 ± 9.9 mg, n =
187, t45=2.53, P=0.007; Fig. 2).