Borneo Airdrops

In the 1950s in Borneo was suffering from an outbreak of malaria, so, with the help of the World Health Organization, they sprayed DDT all over the island to kill the mosquitos. But the DDT also killed the islands wasps which helped control the population of thatch eating caterpillars, thatch that people’s homes were made of, and thanks to this, their roofs began to collapse. Many other small insects started to get affected by the DDT, which were eaten by geckos, the geckos developed a tolerance to the DDT but the cats that ate the geckos didn’t, and the cat population started to die off. This led to the island's rat population to increase greatly. And that’s the story of how an island with a malaria problem, lead to cats being airdropped into Borneo.