Two thousand mice dropped on Guam by parachute to kill snakes

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/02/21724382-two-thousand-mice-dropped-on-guam-by-parachute-to-kill-snakes?lite

by BrandonMarc • 13 years ago

71 82 13 years ago

usnews.nbcnews.com

Ok, anyone else's school have a tradition of catching mice in their dorm and "help them earn their jump wings" by making a napkin parachute and tossing them out a window? If not, this sounds like some Academy grads have been having a little to much fun (the Navy and to a lesser extent, Air Force have a heavy presence on Guam).

shubhamjain• 13 years ago

Off topic, but I think two or three articles from front page arrived in my "The Daily Digg" newsletter. The newsletter serves very intresting content.

girvo• 13 years ago

That's a pretty cool hack. Low tech is best sometimes!

DanBC5• 13 years ago

For some reason, the snakes are almost uniquely sensitive to acetaminophen, the active ingredient in the ubiquitous over-the-counter painkiller. If you can get a tree snake to eat just 80 milligrams, you can kill it. That's only about one-sixth of a standard pill — pigs, dogs and other similarly sized animals would have to eat about 500 of them to get into any trouble.

Just a quick note: Paracetamol is a great and useful painkiller. It's safe if taken properly. But it is dangerous when taken in overdose. People who've taken an overdose of paracetamol must get medical attention as soon as possible, even if they feel well.

A standard UK tablet is 500 mg. 15 tablets - 7.5 g, is enough to be lethal.

People accidentally overdose and die from paracetamol. You don't do that with "500 of them to get in any trouble".

option_greek• 13 years ago

I'm curious, how do people accidentally overdose 15 tablets ?

mortov2• 13 years ago

By not reading the label when they take multiple cold and flu remedies all containing paracetamol to speed up their recovery.

Or reading articles which say you need 500 for there to be any risk.

deeringc• 13 years ago

I guess maybe by mixing different medications that each individually contain high levels of paracetamol? A lot of different over-the-counter medications contain it and if you took 3 separate meds you could quickly end up in that situation.

hdevalence• 13 years ago

From the bottle of acetaminophen on my desk:

Take 1 or 2 tablets with water, every 4 to 6 hours. If pain or fever does not respond to 1 tablet, take 2 tablets at the next dose."

Now, why wait to take 2 tablets? And maybe your headache is really bad. If 2 are stronger, 4 must be better.... 4 pills every four hours means that in a day you can get 8 grams dosage. Sure, it says "No more than 8", but it's in tiny letters, and most people don't actually realise just how serious the danger is.

16 tablets over the course of the day isn't really what most people think of as a drug overdose for something as "innocent" as tylenol. In addition, some cold medicine has acetaminophen in it, and you might not realize that your cough syrup was contributing to your dosage. Then bam, liver failure.

If you're genuinely curious, there's a really good episode of This American Life on acetaminophen poisoning and the labeling standards set by the FDA.

Link: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/505/u...

aestra2• 13 years ago

It is thought of as harmless and it is in a lot of combo medicine. So you can take a cold/flu medicine with it in it, then some tablets for headache, then maybe another cold med, and my headache is really bad, more headache medicine, I mean it is thought of as harmless.

Also giving children the adult dose.

mcphilip• 13 years ago

The ProPublica report referenced by the This American Life episode is one of the best longform pieces I've read all year [1]. It contains stories related to your question. One memorable example was from parents that inadvertently lethally overdosed their son over a period of a week via Tylenol Sore Throat. The parents testified that they never exceeded the maximum daily dose during the time period where the toxicity built up enough to kill their son.

[1]http://www.propublica.org/article/tylenol-mcneil-fda-use-onl...

aestra2• 13 years ago

I accidentally overdosed on benadryl as a kid. I was given the adult dose by my aunt who meant well but wasn't thinking just read a label and followed the instructions quickly. I was particularly small so I probably had a specifically bad overdose as opposed to another kid my age. I had bad hallucinations and paradoxical insomnia. I say paradoxical because it causes drowsiness at therapeutic doses.

mortov2• 13 years ago

Indeed, paracetamol (as most of the world calls it) is highly toxic to many species - while people have a small tolerance to it, there are many documented cases of people suffering fatal liver damage through doses only just above the maximum daily dose of, typically, 4g. Domestic cats can die from simply licking tablets due to their extreme sensitivity - which sounds more sensitive than snakes, making them not 'unique' either.

I'm extremely sceptical of a claim of '500' published in that context - to the point of thinking that sounds positively reckless and liable to make people take extremely dangerous doses in the belief that huge numbers are needed to present any risk.

In the UK, packages can only be purchased in maximum quantities of 16 tablets and maximum 2 boxes per purchase to reduce the risk of both accidental and deliberate overdosage (with a significant decrease in overdose incidents as a result).

scott_s2• 13 years ago

This American Life recently did an episode on how even a few tablets over the recommended dose can cause serious harm in some people: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/505/u...

dmacedo• 13 years ago

People reading/commenting seem to be misreading the 500 number. Note it's comparing to the previous number 80mg, it's not '500 pills' or '500 tablets' it is 500mg.

Which is consistent with the remaining text and known literature.

chime• 13 years ago

It says 500 of them. I've never heard a unit of measure like "mg" being referred to it as "them". So it makes sense to interpret that as "pills".

DanBC5• 13 years ago

The article needs to make that much clearer than it is - because most people reading that article are going to be confused about the number.

nickff2• 13 years ago

Another significant danger is posed to anyone who has been drinking in the days before taking the drug. The enzymes which process alcohol also process the paracetamol, and will be present in elevated levels, potentially causing liver damage. What is important is that the danger is caused by taking paracetamol some time (hours or days) after having consumed alcohol; most people think that paracetamol is only dangerous when taken with alcohol.

Osmium• 13 years ago

Any source on the specific length of time after drinking one should avoid paracetamol?

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

There are two big problems with acetaminophen as a medicication. One, the theraputic dose is far too close to the lethal or hazardous dosages. Two, because it's been in use for so long there ends up being a lot of it in many medications, though some people don't appreciate that.

For example, let's say you are feeling under the weather with typical flu symptoms including body ache and congestion. So you decide to take some nyquil. But you're feeling so achy that you decide to take some acetaminophen as well. And you drink a glass of water with some alka-seltzer to settle your stomache before bed. Not such crazy things to do. And maybe you inadvisably decide to take larger doses than you should, because you feel really crummy and you want to feel better (and more drugs = stronger effects, right?) So you take a triple dose of nyquil and a double dose of acetaminophen. Except now you've 4,000 to 5,000 mg of acetaminophen. Then tack on the extra half gram from a double dose of alka-seltzer plus severe cold & flu (which maybe you forgot was the only variety you had in the cabinet) and you are well into dangerous territory. Combine that with re-upping doses at less than the recommended interval and things can get scary very fast.

cperciva2• 13 years ago

I wrote to the author and this has now been reworded: "pigs, dogs and other similarly sized animals would have to eat about 500 of the baited mice to get a lethal dose".

DanBC5• 13 years ago

Thank you. It's really nice to hear that they listened and did something.

And I'm grateful to you for actually doing something!

malandrew4• 13 years ago

At over 4000mg in humans in a 24 hour period and you overload the first two metabolic pathways in the liver for Acetaminophen, forcing it to go through another pathway where a toxic by-product is made by the body.

Ingestion of alcohol can drop this approximate 4000mg before toxicity is experienced down to about 2000mg.

I know this because I've been skating awfully close to that 4000mg ceiling for about one week now. I had my tonsils removed last Wednesday and need at least 20mg of oxycodone per 4-6 hour people to handle the pain. Unfortunately every 10mg of oxycodone is bundled with 325mg of acetaminaphen.

I really hope lobbying by Tylenol is eventually reversed and oxycodone and other opiates can be pressed into pills without acetaminaphen. It's ridiculous that I and others get close to poisoning our livers because of unnecessary bundling of drugs.

(FWIW I weight ~240 lbs)

specialist• 13 years ago

Virtual hug. I had my tonsils removed as an adult too. Not fun. I've been thru a lot. I thought "Ha, cake walk, no prob." Wrong.

thearn4• 13 years ago

Very curious to know if they set up a ODE 101-style Lotka–Volterra (predator-prey) system beforehand to gauge the impact. If so, that would make a pretty interesting "real-word" teaching example.

nomercy400• 13 years ago

And they didn't film it?!? I was really looking forward to see 2000 mice on mini parachutes being dropped out of a helicopter.

BrandonMarc2• 13 years ago

2000 dead paratrooper-mice, mind you. Zombie mice?

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

World War mZ perhaps :-)

maxerickson2• 13 years ago

They are chucking them out one at a time. Somebody linked the Guam TV report and it is also linked through in the NBC article, it shows them doing it.

dgavey2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure they thought this through completely. As a person who owns a snake, I can tell you that convincing a snake to eat an already dead mouse, when they are not used to it, is not easy. They prefer live and warm prey. I'd be very surprised if this actually works with any amount of efficiency. Perhaps the brown tree snake is different than typical captive snakes, but in my opinion it would be only be more difficult to convince a wild snake to eat an already dead mouse.

BrandonMarc2• 13 years ago

Good question. I wonder if a captive snake is accustomed to knowing it'll be fed with some regularity, whereas a wild one is less certain if / when it'll find its next meal.

dgavey2• 13 years ago

They definitely get accustomed, she is quite predictable in her time table and eating habits. It took a good couple months before she finally ate her first mouse. The brown tree snake in Guam appears to be quite the survivor and doesn't appear to be as picky. Still, from the little I do understand about snakes, the temperature of the food seems to play a major factor for them. That's where I'm most concerned about this plan failing.

maxerickson2• 13 years ago

The article says there are 2 million snakes and that they dropped 2000 mice.

Sounds like a test to me.

ams61102• 13 years ago

And, even if they do eat them, if there's any significant variation in natural tolerance to acetaminophen among the snakes, you will just end up selecting for it and eventually this approach will stop working. Still, if it works, it's cheap and relatively harmless control for the short term.

JoeAltmaier• 13 years ago

Gene pool is probably very small - if they were introduced with a couple from a cargo ship, maybe microscopic. Little chance for selection to work.

MrZongle22• 13 years ago

It's clear to me that once they realize that the place is filled with the rotting bodies of mice, they'll need to import a type of snake that doesn't mind eating dead mice.

Oops.

oofabz• 13 years ago

They should try using live mice with little acetaminophen candy necklaces.

Volscio• 13 years ago

In case you are as surprised as I was that they would bury the lede and not show the "parachute" or how they drop these in, here's a news story with a video: http://www.kuam.com/story/24108238/2013/12/02/dead-mice-bein...

wnevets• 13 years ago

At first I thought the title meant the mice were going to eat the snakes

dangerboysteve2• 13 years ago

why do I think the news heading next year will be "2000 snakes dropped on Guam by parachute to kill mouse over population"

ABS2• 13 years ago

the mice were dead

dangerboysteve2• 13 years ago

yes, I know it was a joke. Kill of the snakes and the natural mouse and rat population would increase.

lkozma• 13 years ago

I would just like to point out to dba7dba that his account seems to be banned and the post appears as [dead], just like all the other posts he wrote in the past 294 days (but not those before). Reading his contribution in this thread and some of his earlier comments, it is not at all obvious why he is banned - moderating a forum is fine, but letting someone post for another year without telling them they are banned seems outright cruel - what is going on here exactly?

ScottWhigham3• 13 years ago

I saw one post of his in this thread. It was [dead] and I assumed it was because it was completely off-topic and self-serving. There was no tie-in to this article except the idea of a 'snake on an island'. I didn't flag it but I can see how some people might do so. Is that why? No clue! Just offering what I saw.

swombat• 13 years ago

I think his post in this thread is fairly informative. I didn't realise snakes could cause that much damage to a holiday paradise by eating the birds that eat the spiders.

gamegoblin• 13 years ago

I just recently emailed someone telling them they'd been hellbanned when they had done nothing apparent that deserved it, and continued to post for months.

Hellbanning is definitely something I really dislike about this website. I can't imagine submitting and commenting for months only to find out I was wasting my time.

yeukhon• 13 years ago

Hellban is the most ignorant and stupidest invention, yet the most effective way to take down oppositions.

dba7dba• 13 years ago

Well that sucks... So I deleted my post. But why was I banned? Just wondering...

Anderkent• 13 years ago

dba7dba: it's hard to tell. You should send an email off to info@ycombinator.com and ask why you were banned and if they could unban you.

larrys• 13 years ago

"but letting someone post for another year without telling them they are banned seems outright cruel - what is going on here exactly?"

There are of course several speculations for this that people can offer but perhaps you should post an "Ask PG" with that exact question.

calvinlough• 13 years ago

2000 mice but 2 million snakes? Am I missing something? Is this just a trial run?

ZoF• 13 years ago

The unlikely invasion was the fourth and biggest rodent air assault so far

Throughout the article there's multiple statements that imply that this wasn't intended to be a one-time complete eradication.

mathrawka2• 13 years ago

I've been to Guam a few times, most recently this summer. I spent some time visiting the historical places as well as hiking and snorkeling.

It always is a bit sobering to realize how war-ridden the history of the island is and the effects of it. And then add in the brown tree snake problem... Just hiking without hearing a single bird is a new experience.

ams61102• 13 years ago

The story says the snakes "snack" on the birds but I'm guessing it's actually the eggs that they are snacking on?

mathrawka2• 13 years ago

Yes, that is correct.

efnx• 13 years ago

I just like thinking about how the snakes that survive will be a member of at least one of two groups:

  * those that don't eat mice.

  * those that are better at processing acetaminophen.

Also - what of the other scavenging animals?

MrZongle22• 13 years ago

Also - what of the other scavenging animals?

Many of them will finally find headache relief.

songgao• 13 years ago

Agreed. I think it's kind of like anti-biotics. If the dose is not heavy and frequent enough to kill all of them, this would serve as a natural selector that filters out those snakes who like mice and are weak at acetaminophen, but let the others survive. The result of this is reducing number of rivals of those survivors, thus giving them better opportunity to live. After several iterations, those who remain there are the ones that you can't use this method to kill.

spokenn• 13 years ago

Surprised to see Guam on HN... I'm from Saipan!

bridger• 13 years ago

Am I the only one that wants pictures of these mice flying down in their cardboard and tissue paper parachutes?

Two thousand mice dropped on Guam by parachute to kill snakes

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