Military cargo flights accidentally introduced brown tree snakes that devastated Guam’s wildlife.
Evidence
An environmental problem of a different kind is presented by brown tree snakes on Guam, which were accidentally introduced by military cargo flights in the 1950s. The snakes have no natural predators on the island, and they have devastated other animals, driving eight species of birds into extinction. They also cause electrical outages when they slither into power substations. The snakes grow to between three and six feet in length, and today there are an estimated two million of them on Guam. The military is now spending millions of dollars a year on eradication efforts; recently, it has been trying to kill them by airdropping thousands of dead neonatal mice implanted with acetaminophen tablets that are deadly to the snakes. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 422
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- CANDY: The acetaminophen-laced dead-mouse airdrop is a vivid, shareable weird-science tidbit.