"It is one of man's curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them."
In the remote villages of Sarawak in an effort to truncate malaria, DDT was sprayed. It's butterfly effect on the food chain however was unanticipated. The poisonous chemicals not just curbed malaria carrying mosquito population but also led to a housefly genocide.
The Turn
A dead fly, albeit poisonous, is a treat to any lizard's stomach. Biological magnification however increased the toxicity of this insecticide by 10 folds leading to lizard massacres. Much like the lizards, the cats were in no mood to resist there temptations of the devouring dead, poisonous organisms. And again the toxicity amplified and a malaria mitigating insecticide transmogrified into a cat genocide. With no cats around to play chickens fellow rats turned to merry-making. The sanitary conditions turned horrendous and a plague saw an upsurge.
The Prestige
To put an end to the rats' mischieves, United Kingdom's Royal Air Force recruited 30 cats. After a month of tireless training, 23 cats bestowed with the sole responsibility of preying mice where deployed in crates using parachutes. This mission came to be known as Operation Cat Drop.
The events of Sarawak are testimonials to catastrophic effects of human intervention in food chains. A similar attempt was made in 2015 where beavers were deployed to clean a water source.
Footnotes : operation cat drop
Image Credits : Google Images
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