Did You Know Cats Were Parachuted Into Sarawak Villages To Fight Rats? Yeap, It Happened
The British Royal Air Force carried out Operation Cat Drop to deal with a huge rat infestation but how did the situation become so dire?
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Did you know Malaysia once parachuted cats into villages to deal with a huge rat problem? This supposedly happened on 13 March 1960 when the British Royal Air Force dropped cats into Sarawak.
While there is no photographic evidence, the unique piece of history is told in a children’s storybook titled ‘The Day They Parachuted Cats on Borneo.”
It’s also recounted in the book Without A Hero by T.C. Boyle and covered in a published paper titled “Parachuting Cats and Crushed Eggs: The Controversy Over the Use of DDT to Control Malaria.”
Interestingly, the cats were allegedly flown in from Singapore. A page from the RAF Changi Operations Record book for March 1960 had an entry about “over 20 cats to wage war on rats which were threatening crops.”
We know what you’re thinking. It sounds bogus for sure but here’s what happened for real that led to cats raining down on Borneans.
What happened in 1960s Sarawak?
Operation Cat Drop happened because we wanted to get rid of mosquitoes, especially the ones carrying malaria.
Between the 1950s and 1960s, the World Health Organisation (WHO) sprayed insecticide all over “malarious areas” of the world, including Sarawak (with a city named after cats no less).
The Global Malaria Eradication Campaign involved using the insecticide Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT).
DDT worked tremendously well against the mini vampires but was also super toxic to the environment. While the mosquitoes were certainly eliminated, it also eliminated other living creatures.
READ MORE: Did You Know That The British Used ‘Chemical Warfare’ During The Malayan Emergency?
Remember the food chain we learned in school? It’s the easiest way to explain the aftermath of spraying too much DDT.
DDT killed the mosquitoes and also flies. The contaminated flies were eaten by lizards and the lizards would be eaten by cats. The cats later died of poisoning. Dogs also died from DDT poisoning when they ate contaminated lizards or frogs. The whole process is known as biomagnification.
However, the published paper (cited above) posited that the cats likely died due to the direct spraying of DDT.
This wasn’t the only problem. With the cat population decreasing, the rat population rose. These rats feasted on villagers’ crops and brought a host of diseases.
Since the DDT also eradicated wasps, its prey, the caterpillars feasted on palm-thatched roofs and caused village roofs to cave in.
This environmental fallout led WHO and the Royal Air Force to conjure the crazy idea of dropping cats into affected areas.
They did this by loading cats into perforated containers and then dropping them into villages by parachute. The mission was considered a success and the environmental balance was restored.
While there are no photos to show the cats exiting the containers, it’s interesting to note that the “parachuting” method is still used to relocate animals in the wild so yes, the method is feasible.
READ MORE: Chonky Cat Survives Fall From 6th Floor By Crashing On Car’s Rear Window
It’s unknown how many cats were sent in during Operation Cat Drop. Rumours put the numbers from 20 to 14,000 cats of every colour and size “falling” over Sarawakian skies. It’s possible that the cats we see today had an ancestor who was in “the Air Force.”
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