[marden]

In the early 1950s, the Dayak people of Borneo suffered from malaria. The World Health Organization had a solution: it sprayed large amounts of DDT to kill the mosquitoes that carried the malaria. The mosquitoes died; the malaria declined; so far, so good. But there were side effects. Among the first was that the roofs of people's houses began to fall down on their heads. It seemed that the DDT was also killing a parasitic wasp that had previously controlled thatch-eating caterpillars. Worse, the DDT-poisoned insects were eaten by geckos, which were eaten by cats. The cats started to die, the rats flourished, and the people were threatened by potential outbreaks of typhus and plague. To cope with these problems, which it had itself created, the World Health Organization was obliged to parachute 14,000 live cats into Borneo.

[subego]

Am I the only one who imagined 14,000 teeny, tiny parachutes?

[marden]

Fri 27 Jan 2006
Paracats Over Borneo (Part 1)
Posted by Mark Elrod under parachutes , cats , Borneo , the WHO
[14] Comments

Last semester in my global issues class, we were discussing how the introduction of an invasive species can play havoc with a local environment. Some of the more infamous cases include rabbits and blackberries in Australia and the balsam woolly adelgid in the Great Smokey Mountains.

One of my students asked me if I had ever heard the following story:

In the 1950s, the World Health Organization sent supplies of DDT to Borneo to fight mosquitoes that spread malaria among the Dayak people. The mosquitoes were quickly wiped out but billions of cockroaches lived in the villages, and they simply stored the DDT in their bodies.One kind of animal that fed on the roaches was a small lizard. When these lizards ate the roaches, they also ate a lot of DDT. Instead of killing them, DDT only slowed them down. This made it easier for cats to catch the lizards, one of their favorite foods.About the same time, people also found that hordes of caterpillars had moved in to feed on the roofing materials of their homes. They realized that the lizards that previously had kept the caterpillar population under control had been eaten by the cats. And now, all over North Borneo, cats that ate the lizards died from DDT poisoning. Then rats moved in because there were no cats to control their population. With the rats came a new danger: plague. Officials sent out emergency calls for cats and at one point it became necessary to actually parachute 14,000 cats into the region by airplane.

I am pretty skeptical by nature, so my initial response was, “Megan, that has to be the craziest thing you’ve said all semester.”

Then I started imagining what 14,000 kitty cats going out of the back end of a military transport would sound like. I wondered how much all of those little parachutes and helmets cost. And how did they pull their ripcords with those tiny paws? Were they all wearing little shirts with “Death from Above” written on them? Did the rats form a counter-offensive or did they just evacuate to Sumatra?

Megan and I both agreed that we would both investigate the story to see if it was credible.

Later that day, Megan e-mailed me an account that substantiated most of what she had said in class. My own search of the web and our library had found that the story is all over the internet. I also discovered that the story is used as a precautionary tale on issues ranging from the dangers of DDT to the incompetence of the WHO.

Despite my continued skepticism, I was almost ready to believe. But there were still several elements of the story that continued to bother me:

Parts of this story are too vague (such as “in the 1950s…”)
Parts of this story are unbelievable (like dropping cats from an airplane by parachute)
Parts of this story are too dramatic (“all over North Borneo”)
Now, after several months of painstaking research, I happy to say that I have put enough of the pieces together to know what really happened in Borneo in the 1950s.

I’ll tell you about it on Monday.


Mon 30 Jan 2006
Paracats Over Borneo (Part 2)
Posted by Mark Elrod under parachutes , cats , Borneo , the WHO
[9] Comments
There are two documents that substantiate the basic story about the Paracats. The first is an article by Gordon R. Conway in The Careless Technology: Ecology and International Development (1972) and the second is a first-hand account of “Operation Cat-drop” by Tom Harrisson in the journal Animals published in 1965.
The basic story is true: A malaria-control project carried out by the WHO between 1959 and 1961, in the Sarawak region of northern Borneo resulted in DDT being ingested by cockroaches living in the longhouses of the Dayaks. The dead cockroaches were in turn eaten by house cats which led to the deaths of all of the Dayaks’ cats and an explosion in the rat population.

According to Harrisson, surplus cats from coastal regions were donated and shipped inland to Dayak villages but some had to be air-dropped by parachute in “special containers” by the Royal Air Force. Neither author gives a specific number of cats that were pressed into service in Operation Cat-Drop in 1959 so I still haven’t figured out where the 14,000 figure comes from.

But the bottom line is that with the exception of a few other embellishments, the story is basically correct. In 1959, the RAF replenished the feline population of the Sarawak region of Borneo by parachuting cats into villages to replace those who had been killed in a WHO malaria control program that used DDT.

By the way, I also sent a couple of e-mails to the World Health Organization about this and despite my promise to sing their praises forever in my classes if they helped me with this story, I’ve yet to hear back from them.

Maybe the WHO is just tired of people asking them about DDT, cats and parachutes.

[amsalpemkcus]

Originally Posted by subego 

Am I the only one who imagined 14,000 teeny, tiny parachutes?

Quite likely. I imagined a big parachute, carrying a huge crate full of angry furballs.

[marden]

Originally Posted by amsalpemkcus 

Quite likely. I imagined a big parachute, carrying a huge crate full of angry furballs.

If you'll notice in the post above yours I highlighted the writer's similar mental imagery.

For those who missed it:

Then I started imagining what 14,000 kitty cats going out of the back end of a military transport would sound like. I wondered how much all of those little parachutes and helmets cost. And how did they pull their ripcords with those tiny paws? Were they all wearing little shirts with “Death from Above” written on them? Did the rats form a counter-offensive or did they just evacuate to Sumatra?

[mac128k-1984]

Unfortunately our modern day history is ripe with these examples. Take the killer bee situation. its not only limited to insects many of the fauna in Hawaii is exactly not native to the island. much of what is there (and beautiful) was transplanted and it choked out may of the native plants. kudzu found in the south is another example of a foreign plant choking out native plants.

[marden]

I think this is the multi-purpose anecdote. It can serve to illustrate all kinds of points.

[starman]

Pics or it didn't happen

[subego]

Originally Posted by amsalpemkcus 

Quite likely. I imagined a big parachute, carrying a huge crate full of angry furballs.

Mother****in' cats on a C-47.

[Dark Helmet]

They touched on this in the simpsons episode with Barts flying lizard pets.

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by subego 

Am I the only one who imagined 14,000 teeny, tiny parachutes?

No, you most certainly are not.

[G4ME]

Originally Posted by marden 

I think this is the multi-purpose anecdote. It can serve to illustrate all kinds of points.

your sig is too big

[/tooki]

[Dakar²]

Your sig is one pixel over the limit

[/irony]

[Kerrigan]

Your sig is too fat

[Dakar²]

Your sig is too orange