When colleagues and I found microplastics in hedgehog droppings, we wanted to know where they were coming from. One answer was surprisingly close to home: pet food.

The story began in 2021, when we collected 189 hedgehog faeces samples from residential gardens and rehabilitation centres across the UK. We found plastic in 19% of them. Despite being one of Britain’s best-loved wild animals, and now officially listed as “near threatened”, no one knew hedgehogs were ingesting microplastics.

To understand where these microplastics were coming from we decided to investigate their diet. Naturally, the European hedgehog eats invertebrates, including beetles, snails, slugs, earthworms, caterpillars and woodlice, so we started by looking at these. Colleagues and I analysed thousands of invertebrate and soil samples from 51 sites in Sussex, UK. We found plastics were widespread across different species and land types.

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