Wild monkeys use tools - and choose the right one for the job

The first monkeys I ever saw in the wild were white-faced capuchins in Costa Rica. Or maybe black howlers were first. But the capuchins were much more charming than the howlers. I fell in love with them. We were on the beach at Manuel Antonio Parque Nacional the first time, and my son Alan had a banana in his pocket. The capuchins were interested in us because of the banana, and they had no fear. The howlers and spider monkeys and squirrel monkeys will stay up in the trees, far away from you, no matter what you have or do. But the capuchins come right down. They even ran out on the beach and snatched things from people's picnic baskets. The capuchins, with their human-like faces and hands, sat in the trees eating bags of crackers and throwing the cellophane wrappers down.

A white-faced capuchin at Manuel Antonio Parque Nacional in Costa Rica, smelling the banana in Alan's pocket
Photo by Sally Kneidel

As a biologist, I know that's not a good thing at all. But yet, I could see myself in the capuchins. I also do what I'm not supposed to do, eat things I know aren't good for me, make choices that endanger my well-being. We were tempted to give the capuchins the banana, but we didn't. We didn't give them anything to eat, we knew better than that. Monkeys that eat human food get sick eventually from malnutrition.

But the next day, we asked the ranger what time the troop of capuchins usually moved through the trees over the beach, on their daily foraging rounds. Our Spanish communication wasn't precise, but he told us and we got the idea. We waited for the monkeys. They came. And they were mad that Alan and I were standing under the trees while they were cavorting from branch to branch, just overhead. The head honcho, a male capuchin, came down and bared his teeth at us and shook the branches to frighten us. We trembled with delight instead.... the pleasure of recalling it even now makes my heart beat fast. We took his photo while he railed at us, infuriated. I was sorry to distress him, but I couldn't help it. Monkeys are territorial, they get angry just like anyone whose space is invaded. It wouldn't hurt him to bare his teeth and shake a few branches. His social stature with his troop may have benefitted from the display.

The capuchin was angry that we were standing under the trees in his foraging route. He bared his teeth aggressively.
Photo by Sally Kneidel

Anyway, I started this post to write about a news story that just came out about capuchins. Capuchins used to be "organ grinder" monkeys. These days they're sometimes trained as "helping hand" monkeys for people with paraplegia or quadriplegia. They're very smart monkeys. This recent piece of research shows that capuchins in Brazil are adept at tool use - an ability that used to be attributed only to humans but has now been demonstrated by numerous species from birds to apes. The capuchins use stones to crack open hard-shelled nuts. But the research goes far beyond just demonstrating tool use. The capuchins don't just grab the nearest rock at hand. They select the best tool for the job. Primatologist Elisabetta Visalberghi of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies in Rome has shown that these monkeys draw on knowledge of a variety of nuts and stones to select the most effective implement. She studied the monkeys in the wild and observed that they generally approached two or three stones that differed in hardness, size, or weight. In nearly every case, the monkeys chose the most appropriate stone.

"The present findings make capuchins a compelling model to track the evolutionary roots of stone-tool use," says Visalberghi. Because capuchins shared a common ancestor with humans 35 million years ago, Visalberghi feels that their behavior may demonstrate that the capacity for tool use evoloved earlier than thought.

But primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University has a different interpretation. He says the work highlights the monkeys' capacity for trial-and-error learning, that planning may not have been a part of their tool preferences. The monkeys may be simply applying life lessons about the success of various stones at cracking nuts.

Capuchins in Brazil selecting stones for cracking nuts, from Wired Science

Whether their discriminatory skills are the result of planning or of learning, they're still a step beyond simple tool use. They demonstrate in a non-human animal the ability to select and apply an appropriate tool for a particular job. We humans are not so unique after all. Do we really deserve to claim the whole planet all for ourselves and crowd out every other species of animal, leaving only the pest species, the livestock, and the companion species? I hope not. I hope the capuchins will always be alive and well in Costa Rica and Brazil, not displaced by cattle pastures.

Source:
Bruce Bower. Monkeys pick the right rock. Science News. February 14, 2009.

Keywords:: capuchins tool use animal behavior monkeys Costa Rica

Dolphins learn tool use from their moms

Dolphin with sponge to protect sensitive snoot while foraging

Not too long ago, scientists used to believe that "tool use" was one of the characteristics that set humans apart from all other animals.

We now know that animals do use tools. The list of species observed not only using tools, but making tools, continues to grow.

Chimpanzees were the first species observed with tools - Jane Goodall saw chimps using sticks to extract edible termites from underground tunnels. More recently, chimps have been observed making and using spears on other prey.

Bird species also make tools to forage. A warbler species on the Galapagos uses thorns to probe under bark, and scrub jays make and use hooks to retrieve edible items - to name a couple of examples.

Marine biologists have also documented bottlenose dolphins using tools. Scientists say that dolphins in Australia's Shark Bay wear marine sponges on their beaks like a glove, to protect their sensitive beaks when foraging along rugged ocean bottoms. Poking around in deep water carries the risk of stings from bottom dwellers.

(Sponges are animals on the ocean floor whose skeletons are flexible and absorbent.)

The boater who first saw a sponge on a dolphin thought it was a tumor. But the tumor turned out to be a sponge.

As marine biologists have studied the tool use, they've discovered something even more interesting. Only the dolphins in the Shark Bay location use the sponges, and only a fraction of the dolphins in that bay use them. The scientists have studied the family relationships of the dolphins in the bay and have now determined that the spongers belong almost exclusively to a single maternal lineage. The sponge behavior is being transmitted from mothers to offspring.

But... the sponging doesn't follow any of the patterns that would be expected if it were genetically based.

The scientists have concluded that the spongers are learning the behavior from their mothers - the only interpretation that fits the observed family relationships of the spongers. Whether the spongers are learning from observing their mothers, or are being intentionally instructed by their mother remains to be seen.

This is not the first example of what is known as "cultural transmission" of behaviors in animals - behaviors transmitted to other individuals by way of observation or instruction. At least one population of macaque monkeys regularly wash their grains in pools of water, and that behavior is known to be culturally transmitted, for these particular monkeys.

Macaque washing food
photo courtesy of www.animalplanet.com.au

What more will we learn in future years about the traits we share with our animal relatives?

These discoveries are, for me, all the more reason to do whatever we can to stop the environmental degradation that threatens wildlife species worldwide.

See my previous post for three things you can do to slow habitat loss from global warming.

Source:
Susan Milius. "Sponge moms: dolphins learn tool use from their mothers." Science News, June 11, 2005

Keywords :: bottlenose dolphins marine biology tool use cultural inheritance cultural transmission animal intelligence animal behavior macaques

Orangutans on Borneo are observed using tools to catch fish

Mother and baby orangutan at a refuge on Borneo. Photo: Sally Kneidel



Field researcher Anne Russon of York University in Toronto monitored orangutan behavior from 2004 to 2007 on the Indonesian island of Borneo. She observed orangutans scavenging fish that had washed up along shores. She also saw them grabbing live catfish out of small ponds. The orangutans immediately ate the fish.

In 2007, Russon stocked a small pond with catfish and videotaped orangutan visits to this pond. She reported that several of the red apes learned on their own to jab at catfish with sticks, provoking the fish to flop out of the ponds within reach. The orangutans then ate them.

Using sticks to frighten fish out of ponds qualifies as "tool use," an ability that was once thought to be unique to humans. Other primates and crows have also been observed using tools to obtain food, and sometimes making tools. Chimps have been filmed making spears to stab and remove small primates from treeholes and then eat them. (The spears are made by sharpening sticks with their teeth.) Chimps also use sticks to remove termites from holes to eat.

If any of you readers can tell me other observations of meat-eating or tool-use in orangutans, I'd like to know.

Russon reported her observations of orangutans catching fish at the 'American Association of Physical Anthropologists' meeting in Minneapolis on April 14, 2011.

For further reading on primate conservation and behavior, and my observations of wild orangutans on Borneo and Sumatra, check out some of my earlier primate posts:

Some of my earlier posts about primates:
Orangutans are lefties; chimps and gorillas are right handed April 14, 2011
Trade a major threat to primate survival March 21, 2011
We are family: new evidence of our close link to chimps Feb 16, 2011
Is males' attraction to trucks and balls genetically based? Jan 14, 2011
Hunting may threaten orangutans even more than habitat loss Dec 6, 2010
Wildlife trade rivals drug trade in profits September 20, 2010
Laws flaunted: flourishing pet trade threatens orangutans' survival August 23, 2010
My search for a wild orangutan in Borneo and Sumatra August 16, 2010
Orangutans dwindle as Borneo, Sumatra converted to palm-oil plantations August 3, 2010
The great apes are losing ground March, 2010
The U.S. imports 20,000 primates per year. February, 2010
Baboons are Africa's most widespread primate. Females rule! December 30, 2009
Mama monkeys give in to tantrums....when others are watching. April 23, 2009
Angry chimp reveals a "uniquely human" ability. March 21, 2009
Monkeys and parrots pouring from the jungle. September, 2008
Chimps' short-term memory is better than humans'  April 2, 2008
Chimps share human trait of altruism August 3, 2007

Some of my previous posts about tool use in wildlife:
Animals making tools...what else are they capable of? May 28, 2009
Wild monkeys use tools...and choose the right one Feb 20, 2009
We're not so unique: Research shows birds have human qualities. Oct 18, 2007

Dolphins learn tool use from their moms. April 27, 2007

Keywords: orangutan orangutans Borneo Indonesia tool use Anne Russon York University Toronto orangutans catching fish orangutans eating fish apes eating fish

Animals making tools...what else are they capable of?

A pair of rooks. Photo by Christopher Bird, news.bbc.co.uk

Animals are at it again. Acting human. Or rather, exhibiting behaviors that we once thought were exclusively human. We once believed, I might say, that these behaviors defined humans as better, different, smarter than all other living things.

I'm talking about tool use. As it turns out, tool use has now been observed in dozens of nonhuman species, including otters, monkeys, chimps, and 39 species of birds!

The most recent study involves rooks, a crow-like European species common in folklore. They're in the same family as our American crows, ravens, jays, and magpies.

The rooks in this study, reported just today (May 28) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were given access to food that could only be obtained by pushing a small rock off of a ledge into a tube. They quickly mastered that task. Christopher Bird of the University of Cambridge and Nathan Emery of Queen Mary College, London, challenged the birds further by moving the small rock farther away. Before long, a female rook, Fry, figured out picking up the stone and carrying it to the ledge. Her mate, Cook, followed her actions, then a second pair did.

The birds mastered various other tasks involving tools such as sticks and wires. They even figured out how to bend a wire to fashion a hook necessary to retrieve items. Although wild New Caledonian crows have been observed fashioning hooks in the past, the authors assert that this is the "first unambiguous evidence of animal insight, because the rooks made a hook tool on their first trial we know that they had no previous experience of making hook tools from wire because the birds were all hand-raised." The New Caledonian crows were known to use tools in the wild.

I love research that shows how smart animals are, and how we're not the supreme beings we think we are. What else are animals capable of that we don't know about yet? They deserve more respect, more of the world's remaining resources, than they're getting from their human relatives.

My previous post about New Caladonian crows making tools.

All my previous posts about tool use (or making tools) in animals.

Sources:
Christopher D. Bird and Nathan J. Emery. Insightful problem solving and creative tool modification by captive nontool-using rooks. May 28, 2009. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Randolph E. Schmidt, Associated Press. Rooks figure out how to use tools. May 28, 2009. Charlotte Observer

Key words:: birds tool use rooks animal behavior making tools bird behavior animal intelligence

We're Not So Unique: Research Shows Birds Have Human Qualities

Crows using tools to probe for food

Birds make tools - they even show handedness in making and using tools.

In the Oct 6 issue of Science News, there's an article about crows fitted with tiny "crittercams" that record the crows' use of plant stems to probe for food. These crows, from a South Pacific island, make several types of hooks and saw-edged probes from twigs and leaves.

I saw a film long ago that showed crows sitting on power lines and dropping nuts (or something with a hard shell, I forgot what) into traffic to be crushed by cars - then retrieving the contents when the stoplight stopped the traffic.

Last night, I went to the web site of one of the primary researchers of tool-use in crows, Gavin Hunt of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. I found it by googling "Gavin Hunt crow tools". He has an interesting site: http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/crows/our-research.htm.

Dr. Hunt says that crows show cumulative change in tool manufacture, which is very rare or even unique among the few animal species known to make tools. Chimpanzee and orangutan tool manufacture, for example, is often haphazard, and their tools show no evidence of incremental improvements over time. Just for perspective - current human technology is the result of a long series of cumulative changes, says Dr. Hunt. The ‘ratchet-like’ nature of humans' technological evolution means that design changes are retained by populations until new, improved designs arise. Animals other than humans have been generally presumed to lack the necessary cognitive sophistication for cumulative technological evolution.

The crows of New Caledonia (the South Pacific island) that Dr. Hunt studies manufacture two types of tool to capture invertebrates: one from twigs and the other from the long barbed edges of Pandanus leaves. The work of Dr. Hunt has revealed that these tools have four features previously thought to be unique to humans and our ancestors: a high degree of standardization, the use of hooks, “handedness”, and as mentioned above, cumulative changes in tool design. The cumulative changes involve three distinct tool designs using Pandanus leaves: wide tools, narrow tools, and stepped tools. w

What does it mean? To me, it means we're not nearly as unique as we think. I wonder about all the other behaviors we've yet to observe in the creatures that share the planet with us. I want to do what I can to preserve habitat and biodiversity.

Keywords:: tool use in birds, biodiversity, New Caladonia crows, Gavin Hunt

Review of documentary "PLANEAT: Nothing changes the planet as much as the way we eat"

PLANEAT logo

Carnivores, take heed! The film "PLANEAT" might convince even the most passionate meat-enthusiasts to lay off the stuff. This DVD makes a strong case that our love affair with meat and dairy is ravaging both our planet and our bodies. The filmmakers used extensive interviews with highly credible health and environmental experts (interspersed with cool vegan-cooking scenes) to illuminate the damages inflicted by the livestock sector and our own misguided food choices. Having co-authored a book on the same subject myself, I appreciated the filmmakers' skill in cramming a lot of convincing info into a very watchable film."

Breeding sow on a small N.C. farm. Photo: Sally Kneidel

The film's strength
The strength of the movie, for me, is the breadth of its coverage in addressing different angles of the meat-consumption issue. My husband Ken teaches biology/ecology and is always on the lookout for new tools to use in class to make the point that the livestock industry has a huge environmental and climate impact. The United States is the world's worst offender - we eat much more meat per capita than any other country. And as PLANEAT will tell you, eliminating animal products from your diet will prevent more greenhouse gas emissions than switching to the most fuel-efficient car on the market.

  Dairy cow on a milking machine. Photo: Sally Kneidel

Great teaching tool
This film will be a useful teaching tool for progressive educators, to replace John Robbins' excellent 1991 film "Diet for a New America" - which is aging (although still accurate). PLANEAT is obviously current and features a number of young, pierced, tattooed chefs in the cooking segments. The two films overlap, in that both feature the research of Dr. Colin Campbell, a researcher from Cornell who conducted a landmark study relating disease frequencies to the consumption of animal products. In this study, menus of meat and dairy were implicated big-time as culprits in not only vascular and heart disease, but also numerous cancers. The research is reported in the 1990 publication "Diet, Lifestyle, and Mortality in China: a study of the characteristics of 65 Chinese counties" by Colin Campbell, Richard Peto from Oxford University, and two Chinese scientists. The work is also summarized in the 2005 book The China Study by Colin Campbell and his son Thomas Campbell.

 "The China Study" by Thomas and Colin Campbell

Singer on ethical issues
PLANEAT includes interviews with Peter Singer, famed author and ethicist at Princeton University. In the film, Singer gives voice to moral concerns regarding animal abuses on factory farms. He also points out ethical concerns in our contributing to rising sea-levels that will drown farmers in developing nations - sea-levels that are rising as a result of livestock-related greenhouse gases.

I applaud PLANEAT not only for its broad scope, but particularly for its very detailed review of health effects. I learned a few things I didn't know, even after years of reading and reporting in my own books and blogs.

  Shed of Tyson breeder chickens. Photo: Sally Kneidel

Coulda, shoulda included...
For me, though, the scariest down-side to meat-eating is its destructive effects on the rapidly declining welfare of our green planet. PLANEAT did address some environmental repercussions of livestock, but could have done so more stringently. For example, the film omitted the most significant eco-research I know of: "Livestock and Climate Change" by Richard Goodland and Jeff Anhang, environmental specialists with the World Bank Group. After a meticulous analysis, Anhang and Goodland reported that the livestock sector is responsible for 51% of greenhouse gas emissions! In other words, our eating of animal products is the primary cause of global warming! Surely their meticulous and widely-cited analysis is worth a mention.

"Livestock and Climate Change" gained notice in WorldWatch magazine

The film also didn't address depletion of marine fishes by overharvesting - a topic certainly pertinent to a film on the consumption of animal products. I would've liked to see a word, too, about the massive amount of water required to raise food for livestock, a growing concern as global water shortages escalate.

All filmmakers are limited by viewing time, and the thorough coverage of disease and reversal of disease by meatless diets perhaps merited these omissions - that's all a matter of personal perspective.

I recommend the film
Overall, I highly recommend PLANEAT as an important educational tool for teachers at any level, for parents and families, for environmental clubs or medical organizations, and for the enlightenment of any individual who cares about health, longevity, and solutions for our ailing planet.

Sow in farrowing crate on N.C. factory farm. Photo: Sally Kneidel

How to see PLANEAT
PLANEAT will be released for home, educational, community, and theatrical use in October 2011 from Bullfrog Films. For more details about that, please contact Stephanie at stephanie@bullfrogfilms.com or (610) 779-8226. Meanwhile, you can watch the film right now on the PLANEAT website.

Raising small numbers of pastured animals still generates GG, but less water pollution than factory farms. Photo: Sally Kneidel

Some of my previous posts about animal products' links to illness and environmental damage:
"New studies: cancer linked to milk consumption"

"New studies: Fast food "kids meals" loaded with calories and fat"

"Livestock account for 51% of annual worldwide greenhouse gas emissions"

"New study: meat impacts climate more than buying local"

"Less meat....smaller footprint"

"Is local food the greenest choice? New study says no"

"Earth Day: 3 things you can do"

Some of my previous reviews of food documentaries: 
"Review of new food film 'What's on YOUR plate?' "

"Review of the documentary 'End of the Line: where have all the fish gone?' "

"Review of 'The Cove', an A+ documentary about the slaughter of Japan's dolphins

Keywords: PLANEAT, vegan documentary, Colin Campbell, Peter Singer, The China Study, vegan health, greenhouse gases and livestock, global warming and livestock, Sally Kneidel, review, documentary

The Wildlife Trade, Forestry, and the Value of Activism

Photo from www.animalsvoice.com

We've been interviewing scientists and environmental activists about the global trade in wildlife, for the new book. We've also been interviewing and reading about the conversion of Southern forests to pine plantations, which are chemically managed monocultures that have only 5% to 10% of the diversity of a native forest, according to Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. A pine plantation is essentially a factory farm. By the year 2040, estimates a US Forest Service official, 70% of Southern forests will have been clear-cut and replanted as pine plantations. Most of those pines are being used to make paper and fiberboard for construction. One solution to that is use post-consumer recycled paper, use less paper, buy FSC certified wood products and SmartWood certified paper products. But more about that in a later post. Right now, I want to tell you about the wildlife trade, and the power of activism.

According to INTERPOL, the international police agency, the illegal wildlife trade is a $10-billion-a-year business, second only to drugs in the amount of money generated illegally. The animals are sold for food, for laboratory research, for exhibition, and for pets.

Here's what else I discovered last week that shocked me: The United States is the world's biggest consumer of wildlife, both alive and dead. We import four times more primates than any other country, most of which go into biomedical research or pharmaceutical testing. I guess I naively thought that all primates used for medical experiments were bred in captivity. And the World Wildlife Fund says that most of them are. But....we're still importing more than 20,000 a year. An imported wild-caught primate costs only one-third as much as raising a primate from birth in captivity. So some of those raised in labs are sold to foreign labs, and replaced with imports. Obscene! Corporations will just use whatever is cheaper, with no regard for the cost to the planet, or the sustainability of such priorities. I'm tired of seeing that over and over - with farmed animals, with the management of cropfields and forests for timber, with the crops and animals that provide our fabrics, and with unskilled workers, especially agricultural workers and garment workers in the Global South. It's ugly.

The fact that corporations' only true objective is to maximize profits for the shareholder is dangerous to the planet....but we have to remember that those profits come from us, as consumers. We can withhold our money from companies using the most egregious practices. Paul McCartney donates a lot of money to cancer research, in honor of his late wife Linda. But he stipulates that the money cannot go to research that's using animals. Paul has written that money spent on health education, prevention, and screening is more effective in combatting cancer than animal research is. Apparently a lot of the medical research is due to inertia - just using animals because we always have. Some of that research can be done on tissues rather than live animals. We can all start asking more questions of biomedical research companies and drug companies, especially if we're making charitable donations to these companies, or investing in their stocks. They all have web sites with phone numbers to call, and addresses to send letters to. When you get a prescription filled, or buy an OTC drug, ask the pharmacist for the name of the company that made it. Then call them or write them a letter. Ask them for transparency in their testing procedures - tell them you want to know what animals were tested with that drug, and how the animals were housed and treated. Transparency - it's a good word, I keep seeing it in articles about corporate deception. If all of a company's practices are legit and above board, then there's no reason to keep anything secret. When something is secret, then for sure something is going on that the public would object to - if we only knew.

More and more, activist organizations are sending people undercover to work in research labs, in cosmetics testing facilities, in slaughterhouses, in sweatshops. We're seeing footage of what goes on, and we're learning to make demands.

One thing I keep seeing over and over, as I research all these different topics on environmental and labor and humane issues, is that companies often give way as a result of activists' demands. I'm really starting to think that grassroots activism can be just as powerful a tool as trying to get changes the nice and orderly way, such as working with legislators to get new regulations passed. Long and loud protests, with lots of media coverage - companies don't like 'em. Activism has been responsible for a number of reforms in the timber and paper industry, and in the meat industry. Because of PETA's demands, McDonalds changed their policy for the egg factories that provide their eggs. Now the cages can have only 5 hens per cage rather than 7. The egg factory we toured for our recent book Veggie Revolution had 5 hens per cage, and they were too crowded to lift their wings. But with 7 in the cage, they would've been unable to budge at all. It's a small step, yes, but a step in the right direction. And if you're one of the caged hens, it's a significant difference. It's a change that signals a more cooperative corporate attitude - which means more change is coming. In the timber and pulp industry, activist groups such as Forest Ethics and the Dogwood Alliance have been able to get Home Depot to carry 'Forest Stewardship Certified' wood products, and also to stop buying wood from the world's 10 most endangered forests. See The Home Depot web site for details. We (Sara Kate) took part in the Dogwood Alliance demonstrations that got Staples and Office Depot to agree to several forest-conservation measures, including phasing out products from old-growth forests, and carrying post-consumer recycled paper. See the Dogwood Alliance web site for info on those successful office supply campaigns.

From the Dogwood Alliance, a description of their grassroots campaign to change Staples policies:

"On November 12, 2002, Dogwood Alliance joined office supply giant Staples Inc. in a joint press conference to announce the company's public release of landmark environmental paper procurement policy. This announcement marked the end of a two-year campaign led by Dogwood Alliance and our partner ForestEthics and involving dozens of local, regional and national groups and thousands of individuals. Collectively, we generated over 600 demonstrations, 15,000 postcards, thousands of phone calls to the corporate headquarters and regional offices, hundreds of letters from concerned citizens, coverage in more than 10 national media outlets and over 50 local media outlets, introduced a shareholder's resolution, generated a letter to the CEO signed by over 150 religious leaders, and produced a public service announcement with the rock band R.E.M. This campaign victory is testament to the power of citizens joining together to demand corporate environmental accountability."

Now, when we go in Staples, we can buy post-consumer recycled paper. They didn't have it before. Scot Quaranda, one of the leaders of the Dogwood Alliance, says that they're working on new campaigns now with other companies that market forest products.

Being vocal and active can have results, especially when we join together.

But back to the topic of wildlife trade - another big piece of it is the trade in pet birds, especially birds in the parrot family - parakeets, macaws, and some others. They are extremely smart birds. One African gray parrot has learned to count up to 6 objects accurately and to learn language as well as chimps have learned it - combining words in new ways to ask for what he needs or to answer questions.

But parrots are in trouble. According to the 2002 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 94 of the world's parrot species are considered to be threatened with extinction, largely because of habitat loss and excessive capture for trade.

Although the smuggling of wild-caught birds into the US has declined since the Wild Bird Conservation Act was passed in 1992, USF&W officials estimate that as many as 20,000 birds are smuggled in every year, just from Mexico.

What can you do about that? If you buy a pet bird - be sure and double sure that it was bred in captivity. Ask for documentation. Or better yet, call your local Humane Society or Animal Control office and see if there is a sanctuary for homeless pet birds near you. You may be able to adopt one. Sort of like buying vintage clothes, or burning waste veg oil in your diesel tank - you're not creating a market for it, and you're helping an out-of-luck bird.

We can make a difference. Especially when we work together.

"The Story of Cosmetics" informs about hazardous personal-care products

Did you know that lipsticks often contain lead? Photo: SpooSpa

Remember "The Story of Stuff" If you didn't see that short but powerful film online, I recommend it. The same coalition has now made "The Story of Cosmetics," another online short that carries a punch.

The Story of Cosmetics

Somehow, before watching "The Story of Cosmetics," I had assumed that the FDA reviews the safety of personal-care products such as body lotions, deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo, nail polish, lipstick, hair dye, sunscreen, and the hundreds of other products Americans slather on their skin. But I was wrong, the FDA does not. That's unfortunate because many of the chemicals in these products are toxic, and are in fact restricted or banned by the European Union.

 Many of us use lotions with hazardous ingredients every day. The repetition makes such products especially dangerous to our health. Photo: Sally Kneidel

Vaseline lotion and nail polish

Immediately after watching "The Story of Cosmetics," I had to go examine some of the products my own family uses. On many of the bottles, the ingredients were barely visible without a magnifying glass. On others, such as Oil of Olay, the ingredients weren't even listed. The first two products I looked at, hand lotion and nail polish, both had chemicals that are possible or probable carcinogens: petrolatum and formaldehyde.

This "Vaseline Intensive Rescue" lotion contains petrolatum as the 3rd ingredient, one of Green Guide's "Dirty Dozen" to be avoided in all personal-care products. The European Union has banned all petroleum distillates. Photo: Sally Kneidel

This nail polish contains formaldehyde, a "probable human carcinogen," according to the Green Guide's "Dirty Dozen." Photo: Sally Kneidel

As consumers, women have the power to force change

Environmental researchers have clamored for more oversight in the U.S., pointing out that many ingredients can have cumulative effects when applied day after day, year after year. The average woman uses 12 to15 personal-care products; the average man 6. Diane MacEachern, author of Big Green Purse published this year, says 85 cents of every dollar spent in the marketplace is spent by women. Since women are the target audience of cosmetic companies, she believes women can influence cosmetics offerings with choices they make while shopping.

"The way we spend our money is our first line of defense. American women have more economic clout than the GDP of China. It's huge," says MacEachern.

The cosmetics database is a fantastic safety tool

So how do you decide which products feel safe enough for you? For one thing, you can check online guides such as "The Shopper's Guide to Safe Cosmetics" by Environmental Working Group, or National Geographic's Green Guide (The Dirty Dozen). Especially useful is the "Skin Deep" cosmetics database by Environmental Working Group. You can enter any personal-care product into the database search window, and the website will show you all the ingredients, the toxic effects that have turned up in experiments, and will rate both the product and each ingredient in terms of toxicity! Amazing!

Products in our home, all of which have some toxic ingredients according to the Skin Deep database. Photo: Sally Kneidel

The "Skin Deep" database helped me evaluate the stuff in our closet

On the "Skin Deep" database, I entered "Oil of Olay " - a product I've been using for years. I found that it's loaded with chemicals that have toxicity concerns, such as parabens and PEG. I then looked up about 10 other products we own.  According to the "Skin Deep" cosmetics database, these all turned out to have chemicals with toxicity concerns: Colgate MaxFresh toothpaste, Suave Body Lotion, Dial Hand Soap, Suave for Kids 2 in 1 Shampoo, Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock, Aveeno Continuous Protection Sunblock Lotion, Ivory Bar Soap.  One trend I noticed in looking up all these products is that the "fragrance" is usually the most hazardous ingredient. Parabens are also very common.

The precautionary principle

Both Annie Leonard (of "The Story of Cosmetics") and author Diane MacEachern recommend using "the precautionary principal." That is, beware of products with possible or probable toxicity - don't wait until cause and effect has been proven. If consumers boycott suspected toxins, the industry will be forced to offer safe alternatives. Print a copy of the "Dirty Dozen" and take it shopping with you.

Toxic to factory workers and environment too

If formaldehyde is dangerous in nail polish, then it's hazardous to the workers who make the polish, and to nail salon workers who breathe it all day.  And it's also an ingredient in the waste material leaving the factory.  That waste material is going to wind up in the environment in some form, whether as effluent from the factory or leaching into the groundwater under the landfill.

What to do?

• Sort through your personal-care-products and find a couple you don't really need.
• Once a week, do the bare minimum - wash your face and brush your teeth, but stop there.
• Take the Dirty Dozen list when you shop and read the labels.
• Products with the fewest ingredients are often the safest.
• Look for products that are free of fragrances and parabens. Some possibilities include Aubrey Organics, Burt's Bees, Ecco Bella, Jason, Honeybee Gardens, Miessence, Pangea Organics, Terressentials and Tom's of Maines, to name a few.
• For safe baby products, look at this Parents' Guide.
• Look at  this list of companies that have signed the "compact for safe cosmetics and have pledged not to use ingredients that are known or strongly suspected to cause cancer.

Source in addition to the links above:

Edward M. Eveld. "Face it: Harmful chemicals can lurk in beauty products." McClatchy Newspapers.

Key words: The Story of Cosmetics personal care products consumer health FDA consumer safety Diane MacEachern The Story of Stuff Annie Leonard factory worker safety worker rights human rights factory safety nail polish toxins hazardous chemicals carcinogens parabens

My organic war on a fleas: Dumped Terminix, embraced light traps

Cat flea. Photo: dpd.cdc.gov

Shot Grady dead

Our 100-year old house is cursed, say the neighbors.  A previous owner of the house shot and killed his next-door-neighbor from the back porch.  Seems his neighbor Martha (who was also his sister) cut through his backyard one-too-many times.  It irked him to see her scampering up his hill every morning on her way to town, brazenly ignoring his "Keep Out" requests. So one morning, while arguing with Martha's husband Grady about the trespassing, he yanked out his gun and shot Grady dead. 

Not sure what year that was, but it was a long time ago. The house sat idle for decades, deteriorating slowly. By the time we bought it last year, it was in desperate straits. We debated whether to rehab it or tear it down.  But the broad front porch and hidden closets won us over.

Feral black cats mean trouble

The flea problem started after we were well into the renovation. First clue was a gigantic raccoon living in the attic. The holes in the roof had to be closed up, so the raccoon was evicted, its dung piles left behind. Then we realized feral black cats were living in the crawl space. The contractor chased the cats out, closed off their access. A week later, their fleas all migrated into the living area of the house looking for new warm-blooded hosts.

Exterminator spraying baseboards

Bad move: I called Terminix

The contractor told us no one could go in the house, the fleas were so bad.  I was living out of town, so I picked the cheapest exterminator I could find by calling around: Terminix.  A "technician" came out and sprayed the crawl space and all the baseboards in the house with a chemical brew of Permethrin and (S)-Methoprene (as they told me later).

Scary "effects" of the chemicals
A week after that, the fleas were back in full force. Terminix came back, did it all again. A few days later, I arrived in town to spend a few nights in the house, sleeping on the floor.  Five minutes after I lay down in my sleeping bag, my throat began to burn. I got up to make sure all the windows were wide open, moved as far away from the baseboards as I could in a room that had been mopped, then went to sleep.  The next day I developed a cough, which progressed into a rip-roaring cough that's kept everyone in the house awake every night.  It's been 3 weeks since then; the cough has still not gone away. The hacking got bad enough to scare me - started thinking I had pneumonia or TB or lung cancer. Went to the doctor who ruled those out with a chest x-ray, said it could be from the inhalation of chemicals, no way to tell.  The "Material Safety Data Sheet" that Terminix sent me when I asked for chemical information says, "Inhalation: remove victim to fresh air. If not breathing give artificial respiration, preferably mouth-to-mouth. Call a physician if effects occur." Effects? Well, whatever. I guess my cough is an "effect."

Fleas return; Terminix says "Too bad"
Okay, so a few days later the fleas began showing up again. I called Terminix who said tough luck; our only option was to sign up for the "Annual Plan" (monthly sprays from the technicians). That was easy to turn down.

Just out of curiosity, I called an exterminator with a "nice" sounding name, one the contractor recommended: "Home Team Pest Defense." They refused to tell me what chemicals they would use. Said the technicians would divulge the chemical names when they arrived to spray. Coughing, I hung up.

We kicked the chemicals, went organic
 

Diatomaceous earth
After deciding to avoid more toxic spray, our first move was to buy a box of "food grade" diatomaceous earth from Deep Roots Market.  Diatomaceous earth clogs the breathing spiracles of insects, killing them. It's a fine silica powder made of the cell walls of diatoms - a type of algae. We sprinkled the d.e. over the floor of the entire house and left it in place for 10 days. No one entered the house during that time, to avoid feeding any of the fleas (which need a blood meal to reproduce). By leaving the d.e. in place for 10 days, we also killed any hatchlings of eggs laid before the adults succumbed.

That plan worked well. But not quite well enough. A few days after vacuuming up the diatomaceous earth, fleas once again appeared - in the bathroom, then a few in the room next to the bathroom. Every day, 25 fleas or so were showing up in the bathtub (all killed by pouring shampoo on them).

By watching them, we figured out they had to be coming from a hole between the tub and the wall. A passage to the crawl space? Don't know. We caulked every crack and hole in the area of the tub, and the flow trickled to around 5 fleas per day.

Needed more organic tools to get remaining fleas
Our daughter and her boyfriend needed to move into the house pronto, so covering the floors with diatomaceous earth was no longer an option. What to do?

We searched the internet, made lots of phone calls, came up with a plan.

Vacuuming is essential
Almost every source recommended daily vacuuming, then sealing the vacuum bags in a plastic bag and throwing them away immediately. My daughter read that 94% of fleas present at any one time are sucked up in a single vacuuming. Some said that a vacuum heavy enough to vibrate the floor does better - shaking the fleas and eggs loose.

Permaculture forum is a good source of info
This permaculture forum is one of the most useful sites I found.

Three-pronged strategy from the forum's administrator:

"A good solution: flea traps, daily vacuuming, DE in places the vacuum cannot reach (and where you aren't going to kick up the dust) plus a daily flea combing for your pets. As time passes and the flea traps and the combing is not turning up any fleas, you can cut it all back to once or twice a week."

So we redistributed diatomaceous earth in places the vacuum could not reach.

 f

Diatomaceous earth in bowl

Light traps are a powerful tool against fleas
And then the light traps. Ken and I had used light traps to fight a flea infestation when our kids were babies, and they worked great. Fleas are attracted to the heat of an incandescent bulb, and when the bulb is suspended over a pan or plate of soapy water, or something sticky like honey, they fall in and they either drown or get stuck. We used soapy water. Worked like a charm. It's recommended to keep the traps going (at least every night) until no fleas have been caught for a week. Below, pics of homemade light traps for fleas. The first one is our current trap.

 Our homemade light trap. Photo: Sadie Kneidel
 

 Photo courtesy of richsoil.com
 Photo courtesy of richsoil.com

 Photo courtesy of Garden Grapevine.com

Photo courtesy of indestructables.com

Photo courtesy of indestructables.com. In this pic, part of a fan casing covers the trap to keep kids and pets out, with just a night light on top.

Another excellent online resource:

The site Beyond Pesticides said if you steam-mop, "the warmth and humidity of the steam may also stimulate remaining flea eggs to hatch a day or two after the cleaning, so some fleas may reappear. The few fleas that hatch after the steam cleaning should be the last of the flea population, and can be caught with a vacuum." It goes on to say, "If only a few fleas are caught [by the light traps], the infestation is very small and can probably be controlled by the traps alone, and the traps should be left in place until no additional fleas have been caught for a week. If 20 or more fleas are caught in a week, there is probably a more serious infestation, and it is time to find the source."

One last tool: jars of alcohol
With our original infestation years ago, Ken and I each carried a jar of alcohol and walked across every square yard of the house every day, slowly. And every time a flea jumped on us, we plucked it off and dropped it in the alcohol. This is better than squashing them, which could squirt out live eggs onto the floor. We kept the jars on top the fridge where the kids couldn't reach them.

Oh yeah - one more! A cayenne charcoal bomb
My daughter talked to some friends who made a cayenne bomb and said it killed all their fleas. So Sadie (my daughter) set off such a bomb in our crawl space yesterday.She said she got hookah charcoal from a local hookah store. She lit the charcoal with a lighter, per instructions from the store, then put a spoonful of cayenne pepper on top of it. Closed it up in the crawl space. We'll see if it helps. I was unable to find out anything about this from an internet search.

So, although the fleas have been a drag, I don't think the house is cursed! We're about to squash the blood-sucking fleas, I think.

Just to keep the vibes good, we're thinking of having some kind of house-blessing ceremony. The fleas will not be invited.

If you have tips to share, about fleas or house blessings or exterminators, please post comments.

Keywords: Terminix pesticides Home Team Pest Defense fleas organic toxic reaction light traps heat traps fleas flea treatments flea spraying lung irritants diatomaceous earth fleas vacuuming Deep Roots