Slashdot Mirror
The Plague of Frogs
jpbostic writes "According to this article on MSNBC, ag folks in Hawaii were considering using powdered caffeine to help rid themselves of an infestation of frogs from Puerto Rico. The EPA's application regulations apparently proved too burdensome and the stuff sits in a warehouse. If the EPA is really concerned with the danger, they should investigate the coffee in some restaurants *quoth the caffeine addict*. :-)"
..when I first read that headline, I thought the French were invading!
"Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement."
So obligatory, in fact, that I'm not going to include it! :)
I can't be the only one, who, after reading the posting, immediately had visions in my head of hyper wacked-out frogs jumping all over the place...
Am I?
"I'm not not licking toads."
The frogs would just annoy you and take no breaks.
but how will caffine help ?
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
vvvmmmvvvrrvv... AAH!!! Toomuchpressure!!!
I mean 3 tonnes of powdered powered caffeine sitting on the Big Island? Hawaii anyone? =)
and learn to spell.
Amphibians, particularly frogs, are supposed to be an indicator species for pollution. From all accounts I've read they are dying off in great numbers around the world. Maybe because the live near the surface of the water, they are more sensitive to things like acid rain?
So why all the frogs? Hawaii... also Australia has also had a heck of a time with frogs, and in BC we've had a problem with huge frogs (the tadpoles are the size of your fist, and mature frogs so big they have been eating the ducks!) Just seems like contradictory evidence to me, maybe some species are heartier than others?
Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon
Fortean science to its tag line?
"News for nerds, Stuff that Matters, Fortean Science"
Sounds good. At least it might stop tenth graders from trying to debunk -real- science...
You know, I'm sure there must be a better way to eliminate frogs than to overdose them on caffeine. The fact that they are amphibians means that they absorb a lot of things through their skin; I'm sure it would be possible to find something that these frogs can not stand but is rather innocuous to other species and just spread that around the perimeter of the hotel, or whatever else wants to be frog free. As for the caffeine . . . I'll take it. Mmmm, 3 tons of caffeine . . . I can stay up for weeks!
How do we get to all that powdered caffeine??!??
OOooooooh, yeah......
Ad luna, Alicia! Ad luna!
Yes, alleged tree huggers, mod me down.
The feds just can't quit, why the hell is it fed business if an infistation arrives to any State and that State is not allowed to eradicate the infevction?
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
WhydoesoneneedtoputupwiththeFDAregulations? Iwasn'ttheonewholeftthecanofJoltopen!
(squeak!)
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
It's interesting to consider that one island's cultural icon, appearing on everything from school bags to shot glasses, is another island's uber-pest. The coqui's call is measured at roughly 90 decibels. It's driven people out of hotels, including the Ritz-Carlton. At one point, a hotel was offering a $75 bounty per frog... dead or alive.
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
Attention Slashdot administration, this is your cue to insert a helpful banner ad here.
You're welcome.
Inventor of the LOLbalrog meme.
Just give the caffeine to the local kids and promise another hit for every frog they can stomp.
I know a lot of little boys would jump at the opportunity.
I live in Puerto Rico. I've always been thaught that coquis can not live outside of Puerto Rico, so their appearance in Hawaii comes as a surprise to me. The coqui is a "pet of sorts" here, if you bought a souvenir T-Shirt it would most likely have the picture of a coqui in it.
They are rarely heard in cities but they abound in other areas. I know of foreigners how can not handle the sound at first, but after awhile they get accustomed, just like us. (Maybe in Hawaii it got REALLY out of control.) If you can spot a coqui alone (that is, not in deafeaning armies), you'll probably agree that they are quite OK.
At one point coquis were believed to be headed for extinction.
Although it doesn't act invasively the green and black poison dart frog has been established on Maui for well over a decade. Also, when I lived on the island of Oahu in the 80's it was quite common for us to catch toads that would breed in flooded paved areas. While freezing works to kill a frog (as mentioned in the article) I prefer to rub ambisol on their head. As for reptiles there is a caecilian of some sort that has become established and I'm sure amphisbeanians have become established I just haven't seen any reports.
...a plague of coders descended on Hawaii, eager to get at the caffeine and turn it into code!
Now the Hawaii ag folks have to figure out how to get rid of all the coders. An anonymous source in the state government was quoted as saying "Actually, we're thinking of holding them, and not releasing them. We are going to corner the geek market, and then make a fortune charging other states by the hour."
There is no word from the Whitehouse at this time regarding the swarm of geeks descending on Hawaii, but the President is expected to make a short statement later this evening.
libertarianswag.com
Boy Not only does caffeine stimulate the central nervous system, increase blood pressure, constrict veins and arteries, and suppress you bodies natural sleep chemical, but it kills frogs!!!
Next headline: Coffee and jolt cola found to help cure cancer
Could you also imagine getting hold of the powder they use, better drink mix the alcohol
Medevo
First, approximately halfway through the article, we come to learn that "At one point, a hotel was paying bounty hunters $75 a frog, dead or alive."
We then learn later in the article that some areas possess frog population densities of up to "20,000 individuals an acre".
Now perhaps it is just me, but does this not sound as though it could be a quite lucrative prospect for a person with the appropriate amount of ingenuity and good old-fashioned entrepreneurial spirit... Just with some quick math, the potential industry of ridding the islands from the scourge of uninvited amphibians could be worth as much as $1.5 million per acre.
Of course, this is purely theoretical and such activities would hardly amount to such monetary windfalls, but it does make you think!!!
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
"Ribbitribbitribbitribbitribbitribbitribbitribbitr ibbitribbitribbitribbitribbit..."
One might think they've got a Hawaiian Frog techno mix running on repeat on the beaches.
Anonymous Coward: (n.) 1. nerd at school or library. 2. karmawhore in training. 3. embarrased prep.
if all your friends licked toad, would you lick it too??
but doesn't raw caffeine kill humans on contact? Absorbed through skin & all? Are they sure this is a good thing to be spraying around?
"The federal regulations proved too burdensome."
Hello?! Aren't these regulations in place to prevent we-had-to-destroy-the-village-to-save-it syndrome?
[o]_O
read my subject... thank you that is all
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
We've come to one of the finest lilypads in the world and replaced this frog's caffeine powder with Folger's Crystals.
Let's see if she notices.
"Croak!"
There you have it folks!
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Don't get me wrong, I like caffeine, but it is not good for you. We have lots of studies to show this. I highly doubt that it is good for mother earth as well.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
The Frogs have set up a Lan to properly channel their caffeine highs.
Just think about it... All those mornings that you rely on coffee to go to work. All those mornings that you need something to keep you awake, and not sleep in until noon. It's what prevents you from making your head explode.
Get them hooked on coffee. Not just something in the water, but the frigging powdered kind. Kind of like a drug addict, where they inject it. Frogs are different though. It would diffuse right through their skin.
Then, when you have an army of frogs addicted to the funny powder, stop giving it to them, and see what they do.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
My cat would go right up to the waters edge and hook frogs with a claw, throw them into the grass and do whatever cats do with frogs. But these were bullfrogs.
A small frog would most likely be a treat for them. But in all reality, if there are as many frogs as they indicate, other creatures who like to eat them will multiply. Vultures, mice, rats, opossums, racoons, armidillos, crows, and snakes, come to the top of the head. The problem might take care of itself.
Um... if you bothered to read the whole sentence you'd see that it's supposed to be posessive (as in "the application regulations of the EPA"). Or do we have multiple Environmental Protection Agencies in the US? Where are they getting all their funding?
Nice try at trolling. I give it an E for effort.
or perhaps a poor student like myself could fund a new car by hopping a plane to honolulu, hawaii and playing whack-a-frog = )
naturally, i would have to obtain a stick upon my arrival, as it would be considered a potentially lethal weapon and a threat to national security, if carried on board a plane.
EPAs
/. article:
NOT EPA's
From the
The EPA's application regulations
Actually the usage is correct, as the application regulations belong to the EPA, and as a result the possessive is the correct tense.
To be completely grammatically correct, the sentence should have read:
The application regulations of the EPA apparently proved too burdensome, and the stuff sits in a warehouse.
The A/C who decided to enlighten us with his immaculate grasp of the English language must be American, but at least his spelling was correct...
sweet...free caffiene?
No more drives to the coffee shop I'll just pull on a fake frog suit and pretend to tbe the world's biggest frog.
And then I'll be there king...
and once i've raised my army of super frogs "hopped" up on caffeine I will take over the world AHA HAHAHAHAHA!!!
In all serious though has no one thought what this will actually do to the surronding enviroment?
I live in southeren ontario Canada, recently we have had an insect infestation in the farmers' crops. So in order to control it we released thosands and thousands of geneticly enhanced lady bugs that would target the mites that were targeting the crops.
The mite problem is gone but now we have a infestation of super bugs that won't die. I have seen entire sides of apartment buildings coated with the things...In novemeber no less(when there shouldn't be any of the critters left).
My point here is when will we learn to stop screwing with mother nature...
The Only Person Willing to be Me is ME!
This page has some photos and more information about the frogs. They're very small!!
[alk]
Can you give me an E as well? Caffeine just doesn't work well enough anymore... Computer games don't affect children... If Pac-Man affected us as kids we'd spend all of our time running around in darkened rooms eating magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music... Oh... Wait...
Where's a Starbucks when you damn well need one?!
They can have all of ours!
Am I the only one who though of this as a cool table condiment. it would take pizza to a new level.
Just send in Quina. S/he loves them.
Would that give you dragon breath?
I assume you meant anbesol..
So rubbing a topical anaesthetic on a frogs head kills it?
And uhh.. why is it you are killing frogs? Serial killer in training?
There are several things that Australians found out about "cane toads". For a start the stench when you happen to kill one. Then there is the fact that "cane toads" are "poisonous". Many of the Australian indenginous fauna have been dying off because of their (failed) attempts to actually consume these things. Then there have been the cats and dogs that have died as well.
Two words...
Frog Baseball
This is nothing new. Giving a frog a dosage that wouldn't kill a human could very well kill it because it is smaller. Editors, this isn't very cutting edge.
Bart gets the boot in Australia - after making a prank call, Bart arrives in Australia, unknowingly bearing a simple ordinary bullfrog, whose progeny then goes nuts and devastates the Australian continent.
Marge: We have them in America. They're called bullfrogs.
Clerk: What? That's an odd name. I'd have called them "chazzwazzers".
Ribbit. Not only are the Simpsons running out of ideas, they're now predicting the Future. Any more episodes with Al Gore in them? Look for the season finale! </weak joke>
And he can read them Poetry from the Hellmouth and lure them into the sea.
Frogs only eat moving objects (with very few exceptions). The caffiene is absorbed along with water directly into their bloodstream through their skin. It has a 'double-whammy' effect, affecting not only their nervous system, but it also drys them out.
Apparently, you'd have to drink a lot of coffee to get a lethal dose. But it does seem to possible to kill yourself (or approach it) with caffeine pills.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
Ages ago, frogs used to drink beer!
These frogs are being studied for their evolutionary traits. Right from the egss hatch the frogs, as there is no intermediate state of a tadpole.
Maybe the lack of an intermediate stage has made this species even more hardy, and therefore more prevalent in Hawaii.
No matter what, the Coqui are there to stay in Hawaii. They will just have to get used to it.
But here in the Virgin Islands (about 70 miles east of Purto Rico) most houses and buildings get thier water from a cistern (think basement full of rain water) the coqui infest the cisterns and breed and lay ggs ...well they also poison the water(thier skin has some nasty slimey stuff on it )..granted we don't drink cistern water for other reasons but this has been known to cause very strange and painful rashes.. since we do shower with cistern water... Now that we know about the caffine...i think its time to clean that cistern.....mwhahahah!!! and they are F*@king annoying
Just Limin' Mon
They had a HUGE explosion of these things. This movie showed them in hoards. It also had this one scene with this hippie - the guy had a VW van and his hobby was to go around smashing these things. He would swerve the van from one side of the street to the other, running over the toads which would make a very satisfying pop. This hippie is the only thing I remember from high school biology.
So, my point is that these toads were introduced for an ecological reason (pest control), but apparently these guys didn't understand ecology all that well. Of course, this Hawaii thing is different since the frogs weren't introduced intentionally, but it seems toads/frogs have a talent for growing explosively.
Excess noses cost Internet providers billions annually. Consider that the noseless ":)" conveys as much information as ":-)" at two-thirds the cost in bandwidth.
Slashdot, as a pillar of the Internet community, stands to make a real difference in the fight against smiley noses. It would be great if it could act as a role model in this important struggle.
Everyone: please run your messages through the following perl script to remove excess noses:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w ;g ; BR>
print;
$_ = @ARGV ? shift @ARGV :
chomp;
s/([:;8B?|\%])[-o^]([\)\(|PB9oO\@0{Xx\*D&])/$1$2/
print "\n";
Note this is a beta version. It only handles one-line messages, and only "right-handed" smileys. Improvements are forthcoming, and patches are welcome.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Sadly Hawaii isn't the only ecosystem being disrupted by exotic species. Most island ecologies are now threatened by these invaders. Australia has its cane toads and rabbits. Zebra mussels infest the US waterways. Some idiot in the 1930s decided he would dry up the Everglades in Florida by seeding it with swamp killing trees from a plane.
:)
Invasive species destroy biodiversity and alter ecosytems beyind thier ability to cope easily. Add to that the effect of human alteration and climate shift we are rapidly losing vital species and habitat. Unfortunatly there are no easy answers. Remember the SNL skit about "The Bat Problem?"
Now if I may be excused I have to go battle the kudzu, it grew another foot today.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
Yes, in Puerto Rico they are an 'endangered species'.
You've gotta be kidding me...ThinkGeek hasn't bought it yet?!?
So these coquis are as loud as 90cB?
It sounds like a great excuse to build a robot that will hunt down noisy frogs.
A hammer would be a cheap and easy weapon, but the thought of focusing a tone burst that matches the resonant frequency of the frog (somewhere between 100Hz and 3000Hz) gets me excited.
Blancmange
If it takes one person 1 year to catch 40 frogs, and the governments solution is a chemical spray, has nobody thought of just using a lawnmower or heavy duty roller?
Given that the coqui are the size of a silver dollar and only croak at night, AND given Hawaii's position on the earth (very little "Dusk" time) I'm sure they're hard as HECK to catch!
AS also outlined in the article, one guy caught 40 in a year... can you live off 3 grand?!
Thankfully the island I'm going to in two weeks (Kaua'i) is not infested.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Coffee in US restaurants is water. If the EPA wants to investigate water, fine by me.
radsoft.net
" Hawaiians live in constant fear of brown tree snakes, which have decimated the bird populations of nearby Guam..."
"nearby Guam." I guess geography is relative.
*cue "Ironman" by Black Sabbath*
is what came to my mind.
Followed by the robot rats -- robot frogs!
Sounds like it just might be these guys:o ad.htm
http://www.austmus.gov.au/factsheets/canet
Imported into Au and Hawaii to stop insect pests in the sugar cane fields....ooooops.
Marge: We have them in America. They're called bullfrogs.
Clerk: What? That's an odd name. I'd have called them "chazzwazzers".
So I sit here in front of my PC, catching my daily dose of /. when I come across this interesting post.
... but as the saying goes: one man's trash is another man's treasure ... of course, this case, it is the other way around.
Considering the fact that I am not an Hawaiian ecologist, I do not understand the dangers of the coquí's presence in Hawaii. Here, on its native island, it is harmless and it had been rumored that it couldn't survive anywhere else outside of PR. To think that it has survived in Hawaii must be exciting news for Puerto Rican ecologists
Yes, the coquís are cute and tiny and chirp like it's nobody's business. Their half female-attracting, half male-warning calls are not annoying. Raining season coming in, the night is filled with "co-QUI co-QUI" -- it really does make for a pleasant natural soundtrack.
[...]
Since feral cats are also pests...
s /
http://www.ea.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive/pest
ACtually, its not tourists- it simply through transported vegetable matter (potted plants, etc).
Since these frogs don't have a tadpole stage (they grow from eggs laid in/on said plants) they are much easier to carry.
Since they don't belong there are no natural predators, so their population grows unabated, and they compete with birds for food resources.
These croakers have gotta go!
And have you heard the sound sample? (go to hawaii star bulletin website) EEEESH!
Thank god they haven't taken over kaua'i! (two weeks baby...)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Hard to catch? Not when they're dead... as in "dead or alive."
Me, I'd be out there with a pressurized pesticide sprayer loaded up with Starbucks' finest!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Yeah right.
"One dose for da froggies...one for me...weeeee! One dose for da froggies..."
Sounds like the worst threat to a state's environment is the EPA.
This is a spider's web. This is a spider's web on caffeine.
(pic)
(Trust me, the link is relevant.)
Any questions?
Caffeine is a drug that seems to have a stronger impact on small animals.
And let them loose on the island "everything you can catch is yours to eat".
And before somebody mod me down for trolling the poor frenchman , I *AM* a frenchman and the idea of catching frog for a meal if they are eatable appeal to me (and my stomach).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Here's a patch for multi-line messages:
& ])/$ 1$2/g;* D&]) / 1$2/g;
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
-$_ = @ARGV ? shift @ARGV : <STDIN>;
+while ($_ = shift @ARGV || <>) {
chomp;
-s/([:;8B?|\%])[-o^]([\)\(|PB9oO\@0{Xx\*D
+s/([:;8B?|\%=X])[-o^]([\)\(|PB9oO\@0{Xx\
print;
print "\n";
+}
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
I immediately thought: "these people really need to get together, have few beers and plain drink&talk their worries over." Internet does bad things to us who believe that it could replace real face2face meetings, social contacts and general hanging-outs.
I live on Maui, and my experience here goes back to the early 1970's.
According to this story, "There are no naturally occurring reptiles or terrestrial amphibians, no snakes, iguanas, toads or salamanders in Hawaii. Until the coqui arrived, it was a frog-free world."
Umm. No. It says the Coqui arrived around 1990. I wouldn't know about that. Nobody I know here has heard of these frogs. Perhaps the 40+ infestations claimed on Maui are simply places I don't go. HOWEVER...
No other reptiles? No amphibians, toad or frogs before 1990? Totally false. For one thing, these islands are famous for having Geckos. We've got hundreds of them right in our yard. There's more than one within 20 feet of me right now. And we have other salamander-like lizards here than geckos. I'm not a biologist. And I suppose the frogs or toads I played with as a kid 30 years ago weren't here either back then.
I don't know when or how frogs, toads, geckos, salamanders and such got here, but it was long before 1990. I'm sure there is some basis for truth in this story, but I've managed to escape hearing even one of these tens of thousands of 90-decibel frogs on Maui. That doesn't mean they aren't here, just that the story sure doesn't reflect any common knowledge here as far as I can tell after discussing this story with my friends.
Coffeine apparently only makes it worse!
No one here really seems to care about the invasion of the frogs. Hawaii is a lovely environment and is home to more than 10,000 species of plant and animal life found nowhere else in the world. It is blessed with having virtually every major ecological zone (the only one missing is permafrost-tundra, like think Antarctica) and was virtually isolated from everywhere else in the world, as the islands are at least two thousand miles away from any other large land mass.
That is, until we started to really live there, and now invasive species threaten many of the plants and wildlife that are unique to Hawaii.
Obligatory linkage for the karma-whoring:
Nature Conservancy
Google directory
Carnivorous Caterpillars!
There's a great deal to know and understand about the endangered species in Hawaii and the invasive species that threaten them. We have no snakes, or many other reptiles, for that matter. There are no scorpions, no tarantulas, none of that really vile stuff you find in other rainforests.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
Thank you, this will go into CVS.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I don't understand why that guy only caught 40 in a year.
;).
I'll just train a few dogs, and voila one acre cleared. Believe me, if you're a frog or rat or whatever, getting away from a well trained dog is very difficult. Them dogs will just do it for fun.
I won't even have to cheat and breed more frogs like some crooks
Cheerio,
Link.
The programmer's mecca.
3 tons of powdered caffeine, sitting in a warehouse? Why do I get the distinct feeling that I am going to be seeing ThinkGeek ads for this stuff?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
These "frogs" are indigenous to Puerto Rico and their numbers are dropping fast (not to extinction but they will be, in a few more years). The Hawaiian gov. should work with Puerto Rico's "Wild Life Dept." and make a plan to relocate the Coqui (that's the frog's common name).
The Washington Post's website is free. Why not link to the original article?
-N
I've always found that the nine iron became the natural enemy of the Cane Toad back home when I was a lad.
... splat.
"Fore!!!"
Occasionally the bastards would move but a nicely timed show would send them in to backyards several properties away.
Q:I was listening to a CD in Grip and it sounded horrible! What's up? A:Perhaps you are listening to country music
try putting a bunch of them in the blender and spraying the juice on the plants they would otherwise infest - it's bio-warfare breeding diseases that feed on them. This is what worked for my mom with her rose bushes
...and this lie crawls out of its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.'
trap them with wine
They are about the size of your pinky fingernail... very very tiny. During the day they sleep under rocks and leaves, but at night, usually between about 8:00 PM and midnight, they climb the trees and sing.
EACH frog has a decibel level over 100. If you get 20 to 30 frogs going, it's deafening.
At the nearby Lava Tree Park, they have a terrible case of them. I estimate easily 1000 or more frogs. Sitting in your car at night is unbelievable there - loudest thing you have EVER heard.
I *suppose* people get used to them... but even if you get rid of them on your property, if your neighbor has them, it's just as loud.
Luckly for me, they're still 2 streets away from my house - but advancing slowly.
MOST of the frogs came in via plants imported to greenhouses and places like Wal-Mart, etc... they are not native to the islands and we would REALLY REALLY REALLY like them to go away now!
The big problem is... we don't know how to get rid of them in a way that won't hurt other things in our environment. For example, dropping caffine, which causes them to internally hemorage... what will that do to our native insects? Hawaii has an incredibly fragile ecosystem - in that invasive species can do quite a bit of damage.
Personally, I suspect we will be seeing gecko's wearing sun glasses ;)