Mercury contamination pt 2

This experiment shows that the diet of the birds is what most likely caused their mercury levels to be so elevated, so the next part of their experiment was to study the mercury levels in the bird’s main prey. This part of the experiment showed that the prey did have elevated mercury, but it further proved that the higher in the food chain, the more mercury in the system. In this case, spiders had a much higher mercury level because it eats other organisms that already have mercury in them; and if spiders have this much more mercury, then birds would be significantly higher because they are so far up the food chain.