Dying to Know Why We Die?

First, an important disclaimer.  This is NOT a discussion of deeply religious or philosophical questions, like do we really die when our bodies give out?  I'll just note that physical aging and death is something most of us are quite ambivalent about. We acknowledge it will happen eventually, but we view it as something terrifyingly unnatural and maybe, just maybe, it can be escaped somehow -- if not physically then through some philosophical or religious mechanism. But notions like the immortality of the soul, kharmic continuation, and unembodied consciousness assimilation will be left for another time, maybe to be discussed over several pints of good beer.

My focus is more down to earth (so to speak) -- why do our bodies get old and die? Why is death inevitable?  Why, exactly do we die?  As difficult as these questions may seem, there has been some rather impressive progress in the last few decades in answering them from a scientific perspective. However, before examining the most current thinking on aging and dying that has come from the scientific study of aging processes let's consider some more informal notions that I've heard friends express, and my own pet theory of death which I acknowledge in advance as being quite preposterous.

Crackpot Theories of Aging: Fine Wine, Black Holes, Leaky Buckets and Heartbeat Banks

Unencumbered by the scientific requirements of reliable evidence, logical consistency, and demonstrated generalizability, people naturally come up with their own explanations of any phenomenon, judging them as acceptable mainly if they meet the "sounds-good-to-me" test.  Generally these explanations rely heavily on reasoning by analogy ("it's like....").  Some are more sophisticated, resting the analysis on some kernel of scientific truth and then distorting and overextending the principles to make unwarranted assertions.  Naturally, I favor the second, pseudo-scientific type.

An example of the "It's like...." category is the Fine Wine Theory.  Aging is like producing fine wine -- at first the wine is young, strong, and rather too sharp and unruly on the tongue, but then as it ages through natural chemical processes it becomes better and better, developing complexity, sophistication and substance.  However, after a certain point all wine goes bad, and the chemical processes finally lead to its destruction, leaving only foul-tasting vinegar. I suspect geezers from California favor this explanation because it can justify a "drink-the-wine-while-there's-still-time" lifestyle.

A sub-category of the analogy type of theory are those that are based on the idea that life is determined by some sort of finite resource that is slowly depleted until it's gone.  The Leaky Bucket Theory is an example, and the name says it all -- we're born with full buckets of vital essence but they have holes that slowly drain the life force until...well, you know. The Heartbeat Bank is a variation on this that years ago a friend suggested to me.  His idea was that we're each born with a certain number of heartbeats to our "account"  and when they're used up our accounts are closed, along with the lid to our casket.  This idea has great appeal to couch potatoes who can argue that they are simply being frugal with their heartbeats. To them athletes are squandering their allotment and will probably die an early death.  Notice how unencumbered this one is with the mountain of evidence that has now accumulated indicating just the opposite is true -- exercise lengthens life and shortens morbidity (see my earlier blog, "How To Compress Your Morbidity").

My own pet theory is an example of the pseudo-scientific category of lay theories.  These generally sound authoritative but if examined closely they are empirically unsupported and in my case, logically absurd.  My theory is that we are each born with an accompanying teensy black hole that follows us throughout our lifetimes, getting bigger and more powerful with each passing day.  Being tuned to our personal electromagnetic auras it begins to entrap our belongings, our bodies, our energy, and finally our entire life force, though things can temporarily escape back into our realm until the final total crossing of the event horizon. Note that this theory satisfactorily explains the common geezer experience of objects blinking in and out of existence. You know, those car keys, cell phone, t.v. remote, hat, tool, false teeth, etc. that suddenly disappear -- only to reappear some time later in the exact same spot you had looked ten times.  What else could it be??

Serious and Scientific Theories of Aging and Death

Needless to say, my Black Hole theory didn't entirely satisfy my desire for an authoritative explanation of aging and death.  In my search for something more intellectually and scientifically substantive, the best source of up-to-date, readable, and thorough information that I found is presented by the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) and in particular their InfoAging Guide on Theories of Aging, published in 2011.  I highly recommend it.  Another excellent source is a 2010 special issue of the journal Aging and Disease, in particular the introduction by Kulin Jin.

The AFAR guide makes the distinction between theories of why we age, which are generally broad and overarching explanations, and more specific hypotheses about how we age, which are proposals about the particular mechanisms and processes of aging.  Theories about why we age tend to be mutually exclusive and contradictory, suggesting that not all of them can be true, whereas particular hypotheses about mechanisms of aging do not necessarily conflict and a number of these might be simultaneously correct.

Research regarding hypotheses of aging mechanisms has yielded a great deal of substantive knowledge on ways to slow aging and even prevent certain destructive processes altogether.  The following hypotheses have received at least some empirical support and consequently enough media coverage that they may be familiar:

• Free Radicals Bad, Anti-Oxidants Good.  Free radicals are destructive by-products of normal cellular activity and when we are young our bodies produce substances called anti-oxidants which repair most of the damage caused by free-radicals.  With age more damage accumulates, however, eventually destroying cells altogether.  Diet fads for increasing our intake of anti-oxidants were based on early research that suggested food high in these substances increased the longevity of laboratory animals.  Unfortunately more recent experiments "...have not yeilded conclusive results..." and experiments "...attempting to reverse the effects of oxidative damage by feeding experimental animals dietary antioxidants...have not yielded conclusive results" (AFAR -- see also Guide to Oxidative Damage and Aging).  Still, high-anti-oxidant foods include chocolate and red wine, so why not cover your bases, right?
• Your DNA dipstick is getting shorter and shorter. Called by scientists the Replicative Senescence Hypothesis, the idea here is that with each cell division, the protective caps on chromosomes, called telomeres, get shorter and shorter until the cell can no longer divide.  It isn't dead, but can no longer contribute to renewing the organ of which it is a part.  Although an important factor in aging, the telomere hypothesis has shortcomings as an overall theory because not all cells divide (e.g, neurons and heart muscle), and not all organisms have cells that replicate enough to produce senescence. 
• Starve yourself into immortality. Called the Caloric Restriction Hypothesis, the idea is that by reducing excess calories burned, less oxidation damage occurs. The operative word here is "excess" because experimental findings indicate that caloric restriction in which laboratory animals are maintained on balanced diets with 30-40% fewer calories doesn't change metabolic rate, but reliably increases their life span and "...retards almost all of the age-related changes mice normally undergo, including the onset of age-related diseases" (AFAR).  There's just one teensy little problem: "Rodents maintained on calorically restricted diets are thin, cold, stunted, and sometimes sterile. It is likely that such animals, although they survive to a ripe old age in the laboratory, would never stand a chance in the wild."  This makes immortality a lot less attractive to me, thank you.
• It's all in your genes: There has been encouraging research showing that altering certain genes of organisms can increase longevity.  For example, genetic alterations that reduce the amount of the growth hormone IGF-1 can extend the lives of mice, and alteration of one specific gene in the roundworm species, C. elegans, can significantly extend its lifespan. It is tempting to interpret this as evidence that aging is a programmed process that differs in timing from individual to individual because of variations in genetic expression and that genetic alteration holds the key to successfully extending our lives.  However, it's not so simple or rosy a picture as it seems.  Those genetically altered mice live a long time but are sterile and inactive, and the long-lived roundworms exhibit defects such as "...reduced ability to enter a protective dauer stage (a developmental state in which worm larvae can better survive harsh conditions), delayed development, and impaired reproduction" (AFAR). Finally, a recent Stanford University study in which the genomes of very long-lived humans were mapped failed to find any "longevity gene" that set them apart. According to one of the scientists who conducted the study, Stuart Kim, this means the genetic effect on aging "must be complex."

Note that many of these findings have a common element -- interventions that seem to prolong life do so at a cost to the organism's overall health and in particular to its reproductive ability. This means that its genes have less likelihood of being passed on compared to those of healthier yet shorter-lived individuals -- natural selection seems to have favored cellular processes that lead to declining health in older individuals and thereby to finite lifetimes.  According to AFAR, "...it is likely that tinkering with genes to improve late-life fitness could have a detrimental effect on health at younger ages." And as long as the detrimental effects do not prevent reproductive success, they could be passed on to future generations -- definitely a bad thing.

The most widely accepted overall theory of why we age and die is based on these principles of adaptation and selection.  Called the Evolutionary Senescence Theory of aging, the central premise is that "...Natural selection, because it operates via reproduction, can have little effect on later life. In the wild, predation and accidents guarantee that there are always more younger individuals reproducing than older ones. Genes and mutations that have harmful effects but appear only after reproduction is over do not affect reproductive success and therefore can be passed on to future generations"  (AFAR).  Not only that, evidence now indicates that certain genetic traits may have positive effects when we are young but are actually harmful in later years.  An example is gene p53, a gene that directs damaged cells to stop reproducing or die. This helps prevent cancerous growths in younger people, but may contribute to aging and death by impairing the body’s ability to renew deteriorating tissues as we get old..

The Evolutionary Senescence Theory is supported by considerable research and although it continues to be tested and refined, it remains the best explanation for why all organisms age and die. It also makes clear the care with which we should approach genetic modifications intended to make us live longer. 

Geezerhood, Ho!

Assessing Ebola Risk: Unbounded Irrationality?

In the mid-1950's cognitive psychologist and economist Herbert Simon coined the term "Bounded Rationality" to refer to the suboptimal way people sometimes reach decisions and assess risk.  Simon's analysis and complementary work by Paul Slovic, Amos Tversky, Noble Prize-winner Daniel Kahnemann and others has led to decades of careful research that clearly establishes the limits of our rational evaluation of information in making judgments about a wide variety of topics, including investment decisions, environmental threats, and health risks.

For example, our limited cognitive resources often lead us to rely on mental shortcuts and intuitive processes rather than careful, rational analysis, and this can lead to errors in judgements and decisions. One such shortcut that often comes into play is judging risk based upon the ease with which relevant instances comes to mind, the Availability Heuristic -- a potential event seems more likely if we can easily bring to mind examples of its attributes. Availability of information in memory can be influenced by many things: its recency of having been accessed, its vividness when initially encountered, its emotional intensity, or the frequency with which a person has been exposed to it.

Another instance of bounded rationality that seems relevant here is the context in which we think about a given potential event.  Research by Kahnemann and Tversky showed the dramatic effect that context can have on our judgments, which they called "Framing Effects" (this work is nicely summarized in Kahnemann's 2002 Nobel Prize acceptance speech).  In several studies they presented participants with simple thought exercises in which they were asked to choose which of two alternative courses of action they would prefer in hypothetical cases concerning, for example, an outbreak of an unusual Asian disease (substitute "African" for Asian and the parallel to our current situation with Ebola is particularly poignant)  One group of participants were given the following scenario:

Imagine that the United States is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimates of the consequences of the programs are as follows:

If Program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved

If Program B is adopted, there is a one-third probability that 600 people will be saved and a two-thirds probability that no people will be saved
 
Which of the two programs would you favor? 

A substantial majority of respondents favor program A, choosing the certainty of saving 200 of the 600 people over the more uncertain possibility that all of them might be saved if Program B is adopted.

Another group of participants received the same background scenario (i.e., 600 are likely to die) but two different choices:

If Program A is adopted, 400 people will die
If Program B is adopted, there is a one-third probability that nobody will die and a two-thirds probability that 600 people will die

Note that in both cases the outcomes associated with the two choices are the same. If Choice A is adopted 200 people will be saved and 400 will die, but the outcomes are framed differently -- in the first case the certainty of 200 being saved is emphasized whereas in the second it is the certainty of 400 dying.  When presented with the second pair of choices, a clear majority of respondents favor program B, even though its adoption has a less certain outcome. As Kahnemann notes, "the certainty of saving people is disproportionately attractive, and the certainty of deaths is disproportionately aversive."

Paul Slovic's work also seems highly relevant to understanding the American public's reaction to Ebola.  His approach has focused on the factors that lead to people's emotional reactions to potential threats and that alter their tolerance for risk. Sara Gorman succinctly summarizes the results of Slovic's research as follows: "People tend to be intolerant of risks that they perceive as being uncontrollable, having catastrophic potential, having fatal consequences, or bearing an inequitable distribution of risks and benefits...The higher a hazard scores on these factors, the higher its perceived risk and the more people want to see the risk reduced, leading to calls for stricter regulation."  Note that it is the "dread factor" that leads to assessments of risk, and this may not be closely related to the objective probability of a hazard.

Is the current furor in the U.S. concerning the Ebola outbreak in west Africa a textbook example of bounded rationality?  

Health worker donning protective gear

From media coverage of the outbreak, you might expect that this would be the case, with Americans overestimating the risk and endorsing objectively ineffective extreme measures of protection to reduce the perceived threat. Media reporting of the outbreak has been vivid, frequent, and sensational, emphasizing the
highly infectious nature of Ebola, its deadliness, the horrible nature of the symptoms, and the fact that there is no known cure. This is this a news topic that is sure to grab people's attention and news organizations have been quick to exploit this, as they typically do with negative events. Far less coverage has emphasized the low probability of contagion in the U.S. because direct contact is required to pass the disease, and that the virus is short-lived outside of the host -- Ebola is highly infectious (a small amount of the live virus leads to illness) but not very contagious (easily passed from person to person).

CDC image of the virus

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post put this very bluntly with respect to television news: "...Ebola is a natural for cable news, where fear means viewers and it’s easy to tap into narratives we’ve seen play out in a dozen movies and television shows....There is sensationalist coverage everywhere, in which networks with time to fill spend hours on baseless speculation and nightmare scenarios...if you find yourself with symptoms including anxiety, sweating, and a clutching in your chest, you’ve probably been watching too much television." Print media is also vivid and dire in its coverage, with headlines like:  "Why Ebola is so dangerous"; "How Ebola sped out of control;" "Ebola outbreak: Why Obama is allowing Ebolaphobia to spread;" "New Ebola Cases May Soon Reach 10,000 a Week, Officials Predict;" "An epidemic of fear and anxiety hits Americans amid Ebola outbreak."

Surprisingly, despite the nature of this coverage, until recently Americans were relatively calm and rational about Ebola.  In a poll conducted by the venerable Pew Research Center in early October (2-5) only 32% were "very" or "somewhat" worried that they or a member of their family would be exposed to the Ebola virus, and most were confident (58%) in the government to prevent a major U.S. outbreak. However, this was before two cases were reported in the U.S. itself, and public opinion dramatically shifted just a short time later, as people began to focus on the certainty of death that these cases emphasized.  In an October 14th Washington Post-ABC News poll 43% were worried about "the possibility that you or someone in your immediate family might catch the Ebola virus" and 65% were concerned about "a widespread Ebola outbreak occurring in the United States."  Interestingly, most (62%) remained confident in the government's ability to respond to a potential outbreak.

Predictably, there seems to be stronger support for defensive policies that are perceived to mitigate the threat. These include some programs that objectively have a low probability of being effective and may even make matters worse, such as banning travelers to and from African nations hardest hit by the disease (see three excellent analyses of travel bans by Mukherjee, Garrett, and Wolfson).  Despite this, according to the Washington Post-ABC New poll, 67% of Americans now favor travel bans, which seems to demonstrate the power of the "dread" factor over rational analysis.

Perhaps the irony of the Information Age is that having more information hasn't necessarily led to wiser decisions -- in fact, rationality may be more difficult because it requires greater effort to evaluate and to integrate the vast amount of information that is available on virtually any topic. As the title of this blog suggests, we may be slipping into the age of "Unbounded Irrationality" -- unless we pay closer attention to the ways in which we reach conclusions and assess alternatives of action.

An Ode To Cosmos, Comets, and Rosetta Spacecraft

Let's face it.  These days it is rather easy to be pessimistic about the human race and so-called "advanced" societies.  The news is full of reports of wars, terrorism, genocide, religious extremism and sectarian violence, willful ignorance (aka pseudoscience and anti-science), cruelty, environmental degradation, political paralysis, ideological stalemates, economic meltdowns, social incivility, the failure of institutions to provide for the common good, the exploitation and subjugation of women and minorities, etc., etc., etc.  The message is clear:  "Humans are no damn good. Film at 11."

Then, every once in a while something comes along that suggests there may be a glimmer of hope after all.  For me these rare moments are usually associated with (a) acts of extreme unselfishness and compassion that dramatically alleviate suffering or improve life opportunities for people who are desperately disadvantaged, (b) manifestations of artistic or literary talent that produce astonishingly powerful emotional experiences or intellectual insights, and (c) technical or scientific accomplishments that involve supremely focused applications of accumulated human knowledge and logic driven by the irrepressible spirit to know more simply for the sake of knowing.  The last category is the subject of this blog.

The event that has suggested a glimmer of hope to me is the recent success of the European Space Agency's mission to rendezvous with a comet, land a small craft on its surface, and accompany the comet as it approaches the sun. This of course isn't as news-worthy as any of the negative things listed above, but if you examine what it implies about human nature it offers a refreshing and inspiring glimpse of a more positive side of our human potential.

After a journey of 10 years and almost 4 billion miles, on August 6th the spacecraft Rosetta arrived at

Rosetta Probe

its target, a comet named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (the name is reason enough not to make it big in the media news).  Although previous spacecraft have flown by comets and have even deliberately crashed into one, this is the first to achieve an orbit around around a comet, the first to study it as it approaches the sun and, if all goes well, the first to soft-land a smaller craft on the comet's surface.  And it's off to a great start, judging by the stunning postcard it sent back to show us it had arrived at the comet.

This is a remarkable accomplishment.  It also adds to a growing list of achievements using unmanned space probes, including the Mars landers, Voyagers 1 and 2,  the Pioneer series, and one of my favorites, Galileo (see my blog, Confessions of a Selective Technophile for more on Galileo).

The Comet 67P/C-G

To put the Rosetta mission in perspective, try to imagine a tiny speck of dust and ice 250 million miles from earth.  From there the sun is a tiny dot, and the light level from the sun is only about 4% what is on earth. The earth looks like most of the rest of the stars, maybe a little brighter. The target speck is only a couple of miles in diameter and traveling at 34,000 miles per hour.  Now imagine trying to send a spacecraft no bigger than a large refrigerator to that icy speck. How would you do it?  How would you find and rendezvous with the speck, given that it is moving 20 times faster than a bullet?  How would you accelerate a spacecraft to 34,000 miles per hour without expending an impractically huge amount of fuel?  How would you communicate with the craft and control it when it is so far away -- so far that radio signals take up to 50 minutes to travel the distance?

The answers to these questions illustrate the extraordinary power of the human intellect  -- they entail a difficult and complex integration of cutting-edge mechanical and electrical engineering, materials science, computer science, applied and theoretical mathematics, astrophysics, astronomy, geology, and many other fields.  Oh, and a huge dose of insatiable curiosity and a relentless drive to explore questions of cosmic significance like "what is the origin of life?"  Humans may not be totally bad...more on this improbable story at 11!

I'll leave a lot of the details to the science reporters (see my embedded links or some of the links below if you want to know more).  I've read a number of them and have marveled at the level of scientific achievement some of my fellow human beings have displayed in this project.  For example, the acceleration problem was solved by looping the Rosetta several times around the earth, using the earth's gravity as a sling-shot to gather speed each time, a technique that took no fuel but added billions of miles and many years to the journey. This acceleration trick has been used previously with other space probes, but never with this much precision.  In this case it was necessary to calculate the exact positions of the spacecraft and the comet as they would be in 10 years, as well as their relative speeds, in order to determine precisely when to fire rockets to slow the Rosetta to match the comet's speed.  Being a bit math-challenged, to me this is a jaw-droppingly awesome feat.

I was a huge fan of the t.v. series Cosmos hosted by the late astronomer Carl Sagan over 30 years ago, in 1980.  Sagan would have loved witnessing the accomplishment of orbiting a space craft around a comet, and would no doubt be making eloquent commentary on the mission. He was not only an accomplished scientist, he was one of the first champions of making science accessible to the general public in an entertaining yet educational way.  The Cosmos series was the first of its kind and highly critically acclaimed -- and it reinforced my lifelong fascination with astronomy and cosmology.  A recent updated version hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is a fittingly high-quality successor.  It has the same up-beat, inspiring and humbling effectiveness as the original.

Look very closely.

Sagan wrote a number of popular books on space and astronomy, one of which was titled The Pale Blue Dot, a reference to the earth as it appeared in a photograph taken by the spacecraft Voyager 1 in 1990 as it left our solar system.  Voyager 1 was about 6 billion miles from earth at the time, and the photo is a sobering "selfie" that clearly depicts the smallness of our place in the universe. One often quoted passage in the book is particularly moving to me because it puts our species -- both the positive features and the flaws -- in a very insightful context, and Sage does it in his usual Cosmic style:

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. [My emphasis]
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

 Right on, Carl. And I hereby dedicate the Rosetta Mission to your vision.

_____________________________________
Some Relevant Reference Sources About Rosetta:

Cometary science: Rosetta's stone | The Economist economist.com

Europe’s Rosetta becomes the first spacecraft to orbit a real, live comet (updated) | ExtremeTech extremetech.com

Europe's Rosetta Spacecraft Makes Historic Arrival at Comet space.com

DLR Portal - Mission - Rosetta at a glance - technical data and timeline archive.org

Long-distance communication / Rosetta / Space Science / Our Activities / ESA esa.int

First Comet Close-Ups from Rosetta Spacecraft Reveal a 'Scientific Disneyland' (Photos) space.com

Overview | Rosetta nasa.gov

Technical Specifications | Rosetta nasa.gov

A Pale Blue Dot | The Planetary Society planetary.org

An Early Draft of Carl Sagan's Famous 'Pale Blue Dot' Quote - The Atlantic theatlantic.com

Cleaning Up Poop In Paradise

[Caution:   Squeamish?  Have good taste?  Read the title again and then don't say I didn't warn you.]

I've lived in Hawai'i for over 13 years and I love it.  There are many reasons why I enjoy it so much -- the weather, the culture, the geology, the natural beauty, the fact that our one measly Electoral College vote means we don't have to listen to very many obnoxious Presidential Election campaign ads.

However there are costs to residing in (near) Paradise.  We locals call these "Paradise Taxes," and although we gripe about them we are also glad they exist, otherwise everybody would want to live here. The most obvious one is implied in the term "cost" -- Hawai'i is an expensive place to live in terms of housing, food, energy, all of which are about 30-35% higher than on the mainland, sometimes more depending on the category.  For example, we pay about four times more for electricity per kilowatt hour here than we did on the mainland.

But there are also less obvious costs, one of which is the subject of this blog -- the trials and tribulations of cleaning up poop. 

That's right, there's a lot of poop in paradise and if you're a conscientious home owner you have to learn to deal with it way more than if you live on the mainland US.  I'm not talking about your usual pet poop, which of course is the same here as anywhere.  I'm talking about "critter crap" that is perhaps unique to our constant and benign climate.

There are at least a couple of ways to discuss the scope and characteristics of the maintenance challenge of poop. One is to examine the different categories of poop based on variations in the qualities of the target substance.  Another is to talk about the major sources of poop and how they differ in the maintenance efforts required.  I've chosen the second approach for this blog because it will more clearly contrast living here versus on the mainland since the major sources aren't likely to be encountered by mainland residents.

Source 1:  Geckos 

Culprit 1

I've written extensively about these little lizards in my blog, "More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About Geckos."  The most common type, the Gold Dust Gecko was introduced to Hawai'i from Madagascar in the 1970's and has become a common feature both outside and inside of most households.  In my earlier blog I mentioned the poop problem just briefly so now I'll explain more about it.

We tolerate geckos because they are very good natural controllers of flying insects, and because we find their intelligence and social nature very endearing. However, "bugs-in-poop-out." Given the open nature of most houses in Hawai'i, including ours, geckos are almost bound to find their way indoors and no screen door or window can prevent this.  We try to keep their numbers low by catching and re-locating as many as we can, but invariably there are a few who manage to take up residence inside -- which means we must deal with their poop until we can catch them.

Geckos are like cats in that they tend to go in the same place every time.  They prefer to do it dangling, usually choosing a high beam or a piece of corner molding to do their business, which is in the form of a small missile about the size of a grain of rice.  If these hit carpeting or a hard flat surface cleaning them up is pretty easy with a vacuum or a broom (best to let them dry first, otherwise they smear).  However, if the poop strikes the wall or the floor molding on its way down things are more difficult. Some ingredient in Gecko poop seems to allow it to bond very strongly to housepaint.  This produces dark streaks on walls or dark spots on molding that are very difficult to remove, and the longer you wait the worse it is in terms of both quantity and the tenaciousness of the bonds.  Besides the daily cleanup of the missiles, we try to go on regular "poop patrols" around the house to wash the walls and molding.  If you wait too long the only remedy is another coat of paint. We've learned that it helps to repaint with a glossier finish, but this doesn't totally eliminate the problem.

Source 2:  Myna Birds

Culprit 2

This poop source was introduced to Hawai'i from Asia in 1866 to control insects in sugar cane fields (see the Bishop Museum's authoritative account ).  Although this worked, the myna adapted very well and is now considered a nuisance by many residents due to a number of rather obnoxious traits (a nice succinct description is in the Hawai'i Nature Journal).  To the list I will now add Myna Bird Poop.

Mynas are omnivores, meaning they will eat ANYthing, including the aforementioned geckos that live outside (I suspect this is one reason geckos find living indoor environments attractive, despite less food and having to deal with irate humans).  During fledgling season mynas have discovered that geckos are a good source of protein for their chicks, and they hunt them relentlessly around our decks (lanai's).  And while they're doing that they poop.  Lots.  And sometimes while flying.

The result?  Many splatto's on the tops of the wood railings that go along our lanai's (their favorite hunting grounds), on the wooden deck surfaces below the railings, and on the flagstone around our swimming pool.  The poop-while-flying resembles something from a military plane on a strafing run -- a splat of poop that can be several inches long.  Like gecko poop, this also can bond to paint if you don't clean it quickly, and it penetrates the surface of porous sandstone making it very difficult to clean up unless you periodically seal the stone with a special (expensive) product.

Unlike our catch-and-release program with geckos, we have no control options with mynas other that shouting and clapping our hands to scare them off.  Unfortunately this doesn't work very well, and we probably look like crazy people.

Source 3: Turkeys

Culprit Maximus

A number of different types of turkeys have been introduced to Hawai'i over the last 200 years, but the ones that are most common now were brought from the mainland U.S. in the early 1960's.  Like the gecko and the myna bird, turkeys have increased in numbers very quickly and now are found in almost every neighborhood walking down the streets, roosting in monkey pod trees, and marauding through people's gardens (see my blog, "The Curious Case of the Kona Coyote," for more).  

Turkeys travel in flocks, leaving a swath of poop as they go that can be astonishingly nasty. Turkey poop is hands-down the worst excrement we have to deal with in terms of quantity, variety, and gag-reflex-producing olfactory and visual obnoxiousness.

Our first encounter with Turkey poop was on a rainy day not long after we moved here.  Turkeys were still a novelty to us and we found them interesting and sort of endearing.  A female turkey and one of her young offspring took refuge from the rain by roosting on one of our lanai railings.  How cute, we thought, as we took a couple of photos.  On the third shot I could see in the viewfinder a remarkable stream of brown liquid shooting first from Mama Turkey and then from Junior, both streams hitting the deck with a sound that was reminiscent of spilling brownie batter on a kitchen floor. The analogy stops there, however, as I found when gagging during the cleanup operation.

Not long after that incident I was sweeping another lanai one day when I discovered the most amazing pile of poop I have ever seen with maybe the exception of elephant droppings (which don't stink nearly as much, by the way).  Yup, a turkey had found the railing a good place to park for awhile -- long enough to repeatedly poop in the same place, building up the mound so that it resembled one of our island's volcanoes.  The magnitude of this pile was so incredible I took photos of it, but I'll spare you the sight -- let's just say it was 3-4 inches tall and really foul-smelling.  The deck surface here was flagstone and when I washed off the poop I found it had stained the stone badly and it was very difficult to remove.

I quickly rigged up a string system to keep turkeys from roosting there in the future, and I try to re-apply stone sealer regularly.  I also chase the flocks whenever I catch them in our yard, brandishing a broom as I run toward them yelling and shouting (again, crazy person?).  This seems to work, though I find they keep testing me to see if I'm still vigilant -- every once in a while I find a nice dollop in my driveway to remind me they're still around.

So there you have it.  Paradise is not perfect.  We have to struggle with homeowner problems that are perhaps unique but like elsewhere require effort, expense, and time to confront them.  Perhaps this will give you some solace as you huddle around your heat vent this winter.

Could I send you a nice holiday turkey?

"I'll Be Right Back" -- And Other Famous Last Words

I've already confessed to having a warped sense of humor in several earlier blogs (see It's A Guy Thing, Why I Hate Liver,  Geezer Olympics: Competive Complaining, or What, Me Worry?).  It's time for another installment.  Warning:  this qualifies as an addition to my TMI or Oversharing series....

Things can be funny to me even when (or maybe because) the situation ordinarily calls for somber reflection, philosophical erudition, and compassionate consolation. Take death, for example.

There is nothing inherently funny about the final proof of our mortality. In fact, it can be terrifying if it is our own end we are contemplating, and terribly sad if involves someone who died before their time or if it is accompanied by unnecessary suffering. Still, the concept of death is maybe too often treated as simply negative -- anything that is inevitable should perhaps also be seen as having a lighter side.

One source of humor about death comes from the last words someone utters, often referred to as "famous last words" even when the words aren't attributable to famous people.  One of the funniest treatments of last words of some real historical figures is by Ian Cheesman of Cracked.Com, and I make no pretense at even coming close to the humorously warped level of his presentation (see Cheeseman, part 1 and part 2).  By the way, the fact that I'm linking to Cracked.Com should tell you something about my sense of humor.  Cheesman introduces his analysis this way:

"Everyone hopes to leave a legacy. To be remembered after our passing is the closest thing humans have to immortality, at least until cryogenics figures out how to reanimate Walt Disney's head. Some people try to pull off immortality with a lifetime of achievements and noble acts. But why piss away all that energy on altruism when you can simply spout one badass quote before you take the dirt nap and live on through eternity known as a guy who needed a second casket for his ....[censored]?"  (Cheesman, 2008, part 1)

Cheesman's choices include serial killer Carl Panzram just before being executed in Indiana (Hurry up, you Hoosier bastard, I could kill ten men while you're fooling around!"), Chief Sitting Bull confronting the soldiers who killed him ("I'm not going. Do with me what you like. Come on! Come on! Take action!  Let's go!"), Joan Crawford on her death bed when someone started to pray for her ("Damn it, don't you DARE ask God to help me."), and Karl Marx when someone asked him for his last thoughts ("Go away! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!"). Ok, I admit some of these aren't so much funny as admirably gutsy, but Cheesman's analysis that accompanies them is very funny and definitely my kind of humor -- I really recommend it.

In addition to the last words that famous people have said, there are quite a few that have been made up by some very warped minds -- kindred spirits to me.  Most of these pertain to situations where the speaker doesn't know these will be his or her last words (a key element in the humor, I suppose, and it helps to picture the situation). Here's a sample from various sources, including yours truly (for more go to Funny.com):

• "Hold my beer and watch this..."
• "Let's just keep on ignoring it and it will probably go away...."
• "Don't worry, I know what I'm doing...."
• "It doesn't look that deep to me...."
• "I know a great shortcut......"
• "They look friendly...."
• "We need something stronger to get this fire going....."
• "Did you hear something?"
• "What does this button do?"
• "I wonder where the mother bear is?"
• "Look ma! no hands!"
• "I'm sure this isn't the poisonous kind...."
• "All you have to do is connect these two wires...."
• "Stupid safety labels....
• "Lightning never hits the same spot twice"
• "Manual?  Who needs to read the dumb manual!" 

A final (pun intended) source of funny last words comes from tombstones.  Cemeteries are rich sources of information about a culture (see "My Favorite Cemeteries"), and the inscriptions on the grave markers can at times be very humorous -- in a warped kind of way.  Some of the cutest are epitaphs found on the 13 family tombstones at the Haunted Mansion attraction in Disney World and Disney Land.  The names on the markers are all actual people who worked on the design or construction of the mansion, but the nature of their passing is made up  Here's a sample: 

• Rest in Peace – Cousin Huet – We All Know – You Didn’t Do It 
• Here rests Wathel R. Bender – He rode to glory – On a Fender
• Here lies good old Fred – A great big rock – Fell on his head R.I.P. 
• In memorium Uncle Myall – You’ll lie here – for a quite a while

If you do an internet search for "funny tombstones" or something similar, you'll find most of the results repeat the same list of epitaphs and it is difficult to know if the authors actually saw the graves or are just re-posting the same list over and over.  Even so the sayings are still humorous.  Here's a few I like, taken from a great blog called My Wintersong, who is at least specific as to the location of the graves:

Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pennsylvania cemetery:
Here lies the body
of Jonathan Blake

Stepped on the gas
Instead of the brake.

In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:
Here lays Butch,
We planted him raw.

He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw.

A lawyer’s epithet in England: 

Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.

Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona in the cowboy days of the 1880′s. He’s buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona:
Here lies Lester Moore
Four slugs from a .44
No Les No More.

On a grave from the 1880′s in Nantucket, Massachusetts:
Under the sod and under the trees
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, there’s only the pod:
Pease shelled out and went to God.

And "finally"

In a Thurmont, Maryland, cemetery:
Here lies an Atheist
All dressed up
And no place to go

Ok, that's enough.  If you want to add your own suggestions or favorite last words, just post them as comments or email them to me and I'll include them (anonymously, in case you're still in the closet about your warpedness......)
------------------------------------------------
Update:

See the comments for some reader suggested last words.  Also, here's an anecdote and an actual newspaper obituary that a friend who researches sports fan identity collected:

• Accepting that the end was near, the funny grandfather and great-grandfather said earlier in the day there was an upside to death: at least he wouldn't have to watch another Bengals loss 
• He respectfully requests six Cleveland Browns pallbearers so the Browns can let him down one last time.

American Travelers Abroad: The Chips Are Down

[Note -- it is hard to believe, but this is my 100th post!  That's a lot of hot air!  Thanks for listening.......]

Despite the title, this blog is actually another in my "Banker's Math" series. Or maybe a dual entry -- the other being my "Traveler's Woes" series.

My wife and I travel regularly to Western Europe. For example, a year ago last fall we returned for our fourth visit to Italy, that time to northern regions just in time for mushroom season. This spring we flew to Holland for tulip time, then continued down to southern France for three weeks.

Over the years it has become easier for us to travel independently in Europe, thanks in part to the availability of internet technology for booking hotels, finding restaurants and attractions, and obtaining information about the local region. Language problems have nearly disappeared as English has become the universal travel language (we often hear other travelers talking to locals in heavily accented English, then return to their native language among themselves). Navigation GPS devices make it easier to drive yourself through the maze of ancient streets and web of country roads, assuming you don't always believe the instructions (that will be another blog!). Europe has also become increasingly hi-tech in the sense of allowing (and even requiring) payment by credit card and providing access to local currency via ATMs.

Although we have thoroughly enjoyed all of our trips to Europe, we recently have encountered some problems due to our antiquated American financial technology. I'm referring to the "swipe and sign" credit card that has facilitated several high-profile hacker attacks recently, for example the infamous Target data breach.  These attacks are the work of nefarious ne'er do wells, of course, but their efforts have been made much easier by the vulnerability of the credit cards issued by U.S. banks. The information on the magnetic strips is easy to hack, the cards are easy to counterfeit, and the information transmitted by data terminals at retail outlets is easy to intercept. 

The weaknesses of "swipe and sign" credit cards have been known for some time, and most of Europe has moved to a much more secure system which involves embedding a small integrated circuit chip (called the EMV chip) in each card that encrypts the user's data and protects it with a pin number. Point of sale machines can read the chip (once the pin is supplied) and the data is then encrypted for transmission.  Though there have been a few hacks of this kind of system, it is much less vulnerable than ours. As Tom Groenfeldt of Forbes magazine describes it:

Much of the rest of the world uses a small chip on the credit card to validate with a transaction. The chip employs cryptography and a range of other security features and measures that create a multi-layered defense against card fraud. When combined with a Personal Identification Number or PIN code (the sort used on ATM cards), it substantially raises security. Even with just a signature it makes a marked improvement over a simple magnetic stripe. (Groenfeldt, 2014).

Now enter the hapless American traveler abroad, equipped with banking technology widely regarded as woefully insecure and antiquated.

As my wife and I discovered last month while exploring Holland and France, the issue isn't so much the insecurity of our cards -- they aren't more insecure when we use them in Europe as when we use them here in the U.S.  Rather, the difficulty comes from the fact that Holland and France are very advanced countries, and credit/debit cards are used for nearly everything.  For example, here in the U.S. getting cash from ATM is a matter of convenience. In Holland and France, only banks in the largest cities have human tellers who can dispense cash on demand, so using an ATM is nearly a necessity for getting currency.

The ubiquity of card transactions (and the weakness of our swipe and sign card) was brought home to us the very first night we were in Holland.  We had driven to a restaurant for dinner and learned that nearly all parking in the town required payment -- not to a human being but to a central machine that only accepted coins or...you guessed it...cards with the EMV chip.  Having just arrived we didn't have any coins and we were going to have to find a nearby store to get change -- not something most merchants are keen on doing, particularly since all we had were large bills. Plus unless one of us stayed with the car we ran the risk of getting a ticket. Fortunately a nice Dutch family waiting to pay gave us the minimum required in coins -- about $1.40.  Of course, they then stepped up to the machine, stuck in their chip card, keyed in their pin and away they went.

Parking machines aren't the only places where our credit card failed us -- trying to buy train tickets went from a simple matter of interacting with a machine to having to stand in a long line to pay at a counter -- only to have the agent's machine refuse to read our magnetic strip. On another occasion we had a major hassle when we tried to use a Park and Ride system in Amsterdam. Without the EMV chip we were unable to buy a special discounted ticket for city transportation and were forced to locate the parking structure attendant and try to explain our predicament. Again, the helpfulness of locals (and maybe their pity) won the day, and the attendant unlocked the machine and manually forced the discounted fare somehow.

Getting gas for our rental car also proved to be a hassle without the EMV chip, as I discovered the first time I inserted my swipe card into a pump's pay terminal, thinking this would work like it does here in the U.S. The station attendant came on the intercom and said something in rapid fire French, which of course I couldn't understand.  The tone, though was very clear.  I tried to fill up anyway, but the pump didn't have any obvious way of allowing for filling and then paying inside.  Soon the attendant came out of the kiosk and with more rapid fire French and a bit of charades she communicated that I had to move our car to the "penalty pump," which she would activate for filling and then paying inside. By the way, the security of the chip and pin cards allows many service stations in Europe to remain open 24/7 without any attendants at all after normal hours. We would have been out of luck -- and out of gas -- had this happened late at night.

Fortunately, most merchants, hotels, and restaurants in both Holland and France have machines that can (for the time being) process our cards -- in addition to the slot where the machines read an EMV chip, they also have a slit that allows swiping a card.  In fact most of these European machines are portable -- in a restaurant the waiter brings the machine to your table when you are ready to pay your bill and the whole transaction takes place right there.  Since your card never leaves your sight, this is another way in which the European system is more secure. Although we never had a problem with a merchant refusing our swipe and sign card, this isn't always the case. Tom Groenfeldt quotes one credit card vendor as saying that merchants, especially in France where they have had EMV the longest, are very resistant to taking a card that isn’t chip and PIN, and restaurants sometimes don’t want to accept cards with just a mag stripe. In other words, unless you want to wind up washing dishes for your delicious meal in Cannes or Monaco, take plenty of cash as a backup.

So why haven't American banks switched to the new cards?

According to an analysis posted on the Credit Card Forum there are several reasons:

Why? Well, there isn’t exactly a huge demand for them. Unless you’re traveling abroad, you don’t really have an everyday need for a chip card, as few merchants have upgraded to payment terminals that accept them. Add in the fact that chip cards a more expensive to produce, and you wind up with three parties (consumers, merchants and issuers) who haven’t been in a big hurry to make the switch.

From a Banker's Math perspective the expense to card issuers of covering fraudulent charges is less than the cost and inconvenience of changing to the chip system. The public concern over identity theft and insecure credit card transactions may be changing that equation, however.  Credit card issuers now see the chip technology as a possible competitive advantage in attracting new accounts and have begun to offer them in limited markets -- but almost always in connection with yearly fee cards and not necessarily with cards that have no foreign transaction fees.  For current lists of who offers what, see posts by The Points Guy,  Credit Card Forum and NerdWallet.

To make things even more confusing, most of the chip cards now being made available to Americans are "chip and sign," not "chip and pin."  (If a pin is issued with these cards, it is for obtaining cash advances at ATM's, not for point of sale purchases.) And a quick search of internet forums will reveal many reports of people being unable to use them in Europe, or finding that they will work in some instances and not others.  Not a good solution but still better than the old system.

For now we have adopted a wait-and-see stance.  But before our next trip abroad we will have one of the chip cards The front runners right now are Barclaycard Arrival Plus ($89) and the Chase Sapphire Preferred ($95).  The Barclaycard is a true chip and pin card.  The Chase Sapphire is chip and signature now and likely to have chip and pin later in the year.  We'll keep you posted.

Happy travels, happy banking.........

The Curious Case of The Kona Coyote

Well, right up front I have to admit that coyotes do not really exist in Hawai'i, at least in the form that most of you know.  Here they are much smaller and go by another name -- Herpestes Javanicus or "Mongoose" for short.  I call them coyotes because they fill much the same ecological niche here as coyotes do on the mainland U.S.

Coyotus Konicus

Although many visitors to Hawai'i assume mongooses are native to the islands, they are actually from India and Indonesia, and were deliberately introduced here in 1883 to control rats in the sugar cane fields. Some initial success in the Carribean and West Indies with this method was reported in 1882 by naturalist W.B. Espeut.  Espeut and others quickly began to raise mongooses and sell them commercially, including some to cane growers in Hawai'i (not all the islands, however).  Unfortunately Espreut may have been a teensy bit premature in promoting the introduction of mongooses both here and elsewhere. Not only do we still have rats, the mongoose is now a very serious problem, as it is nearly everywhere else it has been introduced.  In their authoritative book on mongooses, Dunn and Hinton describe the introduction of the mongoose into the West Indies as "...one of the most disastrous attempts ever made at biological control"  (Mongooses, p. 63), and the same is true here.  The reasons for the failure are an important cautionary tale for those of us who live on islands, as we shall see.

The rat, too was introduced to Hawai'i but unintentionally -- one species coming with the Polynesian settlers about 1600 years ago and two others (the Black, or Roof Rat and the Norway Rat) with Europeans and Americans beginning in the late 18th century (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Factsheet).

Espeut assumed that all rats are the same, as most of us do (you've seen one rat, you've seen them all, right?). Turns out the differences are very, very important. The Norway rat is a ground-nesting species whereas the other two nest in trees or high structures (the Polynesian and Roof rats). The mongoose is a mediocre climber and so it was able to prey on the Norway rat but had much more difficulty with the other two. In a number of studies scientists have found that the introduction of mongoose has led to a decrease in Norway rats but increases in the other two varieties.  The often-quoted story that the mongoose didn't control rats in Hawai'i because the mongoose is active during the day whereas rats are active at night is a gross oversimplification -- the mongoose was able to find the nests of the Norway rat and destroy them even during the day, but it couldn't reach the other two, day or night.

Espeut also underestimated the breeding ability of rats, which far outstrips predation by mongooses.  Further, after reducing the numbers of Norway rats, mongoose then go after other sources of food, including the eggs of ground-nesting birds, beneficial lizards, snakes (none in Hawai'i) and amphibians.  And there are no natural predators in Hawai'i to keep the populations of mongoose in check.

Both the mongoose and the rat were introduced to Hawai'i and are clearly new arrivals here.  In fact, prior to the arrival of humans in the Hawaiian Islands there only two species of endemic mammals -- the Monk Seal and the Hawaiian Bat. The Polynesians intentionally brought two more (besides themselves, of course):  a small domesticated pig and a small variety of dog.  All the rest have been brought here intentionally or accidentally in the last 200+ years -- the blink of an eye in geological and evolutionary time. While it is true that everything here came from somewhere else, the rate of introduction is crucial to understanding the ecological impact these introductions have had and to appreciating those things that are truly unique here.

The Hawaiian Islands are the most isolated group of islands in the world.  Their isolation has meant that the species of plants and animals that managed to arrive here on their own from other parts of the world were themselves isolated from that time on and evolved over eons into unique forms.  For instance we have raspberry vines here but they don't have thorns because they no longer needed them as defense against browsing mammals. Almost all endemic Hawaiian birds evolved from a single species of honey creeper and are found nowhere else on earth. Certain trees, like the Ohia, evolved in the presence of almost continuous volcanic activity and are able to withstand and even thrive in conditions that would kill many others.

Most people who visit Hawai'i see a lush and colorful landscape that, though exotic, still seems somewhat

Java Sparrows (Introduced 1960's)

Safron Finch (SA, introduced 1960's)

familiar.  This is because many of the plants, animals, birds, and insects are in fact not from Hawai'i at all but from the mainland U.S., South America, Europe, and Asia. For example, nearly all of the colorful birds people see (including parrots, turkeys, pheasants, and various songbirds) came from elsewhere, many within the past 200 years or less. At my house I occasionally see two endemic bird species, the I'o and the Pu'eo (native hawks and owls, respectively).  That's it. There are, however many cute introduced birds in my neighborhood, like the Saffron Finch from South America and the Java Sparrow from Indonesia, both introduced in the 1960's. There were dozens more native birds but they are either now extinct or are only found in remote areas, usually at much higher elevations than most tourists go (an exception is Volcanoes National Park where a number of native birds can be seen).

Many of the less attractive aspects of Hawai'i also are not original.  Here's a partial list of negative critters that were NOT in Hawai'i before their recent introduction by humans:

• rats
• mice
• cockroaches
• ants
• mosquitos
• termites
• wasps (Yellow Jacket variety)
• giant centipedes
• slugs

Looking at the list above, it is clear how we use our past experiences with the world to shape our expectations and interpretations of what we encounter in new places.  Nearly all of us have lived where pests like rats, ants and mosquitos are a natural and common aspect of our environment and so we are not surprised when they exist here in Hawai'i also. The real surprise is that this was a place not long ago where they did not exist.  Imagine -- no rats, mice, mosquitoes, ants, or cockroaches!  And of course the sad fact is that they wouldn't be here now if it weren't for us.

Our past experiences can also lead us astray when we assess the implications of what we see in a new environment. This is particularly true for Hawai'i's isolated and uniquely fragile environment. For instance, many of those beautiful birds I mentioned are considered by biologists to be serious problems here because although they are in ecological balance in their original habitats, they become an invasive species when they are introduced to Hawai'i.  Relying on our preference for their attractiveness or their benign role elsewhere as the basis for judging their desirability in Hawaii's environment can be a very bad mistake.

To call something invasive isn't the same as using other negative terms, like referring to a particular plant as a "weed."  Weeds are often simply something we deem undesirable based on aesthetic preference.  An "invasive species" is something that meets one or more of a number of specific scientific criteria, including:

• being able to spread quickly and widely
• being either a predator that threatens to extinguish beneficial native species or having qualities that give it competitive superiority over other species for food or territory
• altering the habitat in unsustainable ways
• producing significant negative impact on the local economy

Of course, values and attitudes are still at play when we decide what action, if any, should be taken to control invasive species. This is particularly true when the species is something we find beautiful or cute, like most of the small birds we have introduced, or a species we find desirable in other ways, like the animals brought here to be hunted for food or sport.

An instructive comparison is between a variety of wild turkey introduced here in 1961 versus the Nene, an endemic variety of goose and the Hawai'i state bird. Both are large, ground-nesting and foraging birds that prefer not to fly much but are magnificent when they do. The Nene is severely endangered, whereas the wild turkey has increased from 400 birds to 16,000 in just 50 years (there

Latest introduction 1960's

are actually several varieties of turkeys in Hawai'i, all of them intentionally introduced beginning in the late 1700's and 1800's).  In its original environment of North America the wild turkey's numbers are kept in balance by several predators (fox, coyotes, cougars, large birds of prey, skunks, bobcats, racoons, possum, and snakes), harsh winters, and hunting by humans. Being a prey animal living in harsh conditions, it evolved a number of characteristics to counter these threats:  (1) it has large number of offspring, 10-14 chicks; (2) it is polygamous, with the males establishing large harems of females during mating season; (3) it eats almost anything -- leaves, fruit, seeds, and nuts of a wide variety of plants, shrubs, and trees, insects of various kinds, even small amphibians and lizards, (4) it takes refuge in trees at night to avoid predators; (5) it has developed resistance to many diseases carried by other mainland birds and animals. Without the controlling influences in the turkey's original environment, these qualities can be very ecologically problematic in Hawai'i where there are far fewer predators, a very benign climate, few competitors, and plenty of food.

The Nene, on the other hand, evolved in the absence of all the predators listed above with the exception of birds of prey, and without the ecological competition of other foraging birds (recall,

Nene -- Endemic

most other birds were types of honey-creepers).  It has fewer offpring, 1-5 per female, tends to be monogamous (often mating for life), is a selective and somewhat picky eater of leaves, seeds and berries and has no immunity to diseases carried by birds and animals recently introduced.  These qualities were adaptive for the environment that existed before the arrival of humans and the introduction of predators and generalist competitors. But Nene are poorly equipped to handle these sudden changes, and only through an aggressive captive breeding program have they been brought back from the brink of extinction. People often see Nene in open grasslands, like golf-courses, and incorrectly assume they are plentiful.  Visitors mistakenly believe them to be Canadian Geese, from which they evolved starting about 500,000 years ago, and which have become a serious nuisance in urban areas of the mainland where they congregate in large numbers -- another example of how past experience can sometimes lead to wrong conclusions in new environments.

The natural introduction of a new species causes an imbalance in an existing ecosystem that in time will sort itself out. In the case of Hawai'i new plants, animals and insects arrived at a relatively slow pace due to the isolation of the islands. However, beginning with the arrival of humans 1,600 years ago and accelerating tremendously with Cook's discovery of the islands a little over 200 years ago, hundreds of new species of plants, animals, insects, and diseases have been introduced within a very short time.  And the ecosystem is still in turmoil, according to biologists who are studying this process and who find Hawai'i a fascinating and valuable natural laboratory to observe both ecological adaptation and evolution in action. The biologists naturally and understandably stress the negative impact new species have had on native populations but they are also intrigued by how these new species interact with each other and in some cases how native species have adapted in positive ways to the newcomers.

Apapane -- Endemic

For example, the Pue'o (endemic owl) and the I'o (endemic hawk) never saw a rat or a mouse until their recent introduction.  Their diet consisted mainly of other native birds.  Now, however, they are learning that these new furry critters are a tasty source of protein.  They also are quite happy to eat introduced birds, particularly now that the native varieties are scarce. Another example is that one species of endemic bird, the beautiful Apapane, is apparently developing a resistance to Avian Malaria that is carried by alien birds -- this disease, transmitted by mosquitoes that breed in terrain uprooted by European wild boars, has decimated many native Hawaiian species. As I said, evolution in action.

There are also examples of new arrivals controlling each other. Mongoose, rats, and feral cats -- justly demonized for preying on native birds -- are now major controllers of burgeoning populations of introduced birds that would otherwise become an even greater destructive problem than they are now. This is why I call the Mongoose a Kona Coyote -- in this environment it performs a controlling role similar to the coyote on the mainland U.S.. Although mongoose, rats and feral cats are themselves a serious problem, if they were to be suddenly eradicated in Hawai'i the populations of introduced bird species would skyrocket, with severely negative consequences.

Note that this is another illustration of how our prior experiences can lead us astray in new situations.  Many of us from the mainland U.S. are very familiar with the negative impact of cats on bird populations there.  But in that case the birds are not alien and not invasive. Of course, eradicating introduced birds in Hawai'i would likely also cause problems.  For instance, the Myna bird from Southeast Asia has become very fond of eating geckos from Madagascar, which aside from humans and cats have no other predators here and are very prolific breeders.

These examples illustrate the complexity of the mess we have created and the fact that solutions can't be as simple as we often assume -- some approaches will just make matters worse here in Hawai'i even though they might be appropriate elsewhere.  And since rolling back the clock isn't really possible, we are left with developing ways to substitute the control forces that are absent for the species we have introduced, an expensive and risky proposition given our historical record in this matter (remember the lesson from the curious case of the Kona Coyote).

If you look back at the list of qualities for defining an invasive species you might agree that humans fit nearly all of them.  We are able to spread quickly and widely over most of the planet. We are a predator that threatens to extinguish beneficial native species. We have qualities that give us competitive superiority over other species for food and territory.  And we certainly have a record of altering the habitat in unsustainable ways. A key difference between us and other invasive species, however, is that we are aware of what we are doing and we can alter our behavior and mitigate the effects of our own presence as well as the effects of those species we have introduced either intentionally or unintentionally.

The question is whether we have the will to do so.  And whether we still have time.
__________________________________
Some Resources and References:
Hawai'i's Invasive Species, 2001.  Staples, G.W. & Cowie, R.H. (Eds.). Mutual Publishing, Honolulu.
"Invasive Species"   U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Encyclopedia of Invasive Species: From Africanized Honey Bees to Zebra Mussels by Susan L. Woodward & Joyce A. Quinn
Encyclopedia of Biological Invasions - edited by Daniel Simberloff & Marcel Rejmanek
Biological Control by H.M.T. Hokkanen & James M. Lynch
Fighting Invasive Species in Hawai'i  The Nature Conservancy
Invasive Species in Hawai'i University of Hawa'i'
Mongooses by A. M. S. Dunn & H. E. Hinton


Other Blogs in the "Critters of Hawai'i series:
Tons of Fun
"Lei"zy Horses and Hot Malasadas
More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About Geckos