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Once upon a time in Borneo, everybody was dying of malaria, so they sprayed a lot of the insecticide DDT (dichlorodiphenylt richloroethane), which kill (more)

Once upon a time in Borneo, everybody was dying of malaria, so they sprayed a lot of the insecticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), which killed the mosquitoes that transmitted the disease. Cases dropped, but inexplicably, peoples’ roofs started caving in. DDT had also killed wasps that kept the caterpillar population in check, so the caterpillars ate the roof thatch. Geckos ate the wasps, and cats ate the geckos. Cats started dropping dead, and the rat population flourished, which lead to an outbreak of the plague. So, to solve the problem, health officials parachuted cats into Borneo. Or, at least that’s how the story goes. Always wondered whether there was any truth to the cat story, which did come up in congressional hearings on DDT use. Turns out, there’s more than you’d think. Patrick O’Shaughnessy, an environmental engineer at the University of Iowa, did some digging and found kernels of truth from which the cat drop myth probably grew. His work was published in th

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