Q 01/05

What does Guam scatter by helicopter over its forests, laced with poison, to kill brown tree snakes?

A) Frozen chicks

B) Dead mice

C) Hen's eggs

D) Strips of beef

Answer · why

B) Dead mice

Dead mice carry the dose: in one aerial trial over a 55-hectare forest plot, 11 of the 30 radio-tagged snakes there died.

Q 02/05

With its forest birds eaten by brown tree snakes, Guam's jungles hold up to 40 times more of what?

A) Mosquitoes

B) Land snails

C) Spiders

D) Cockroaches

Answer · why

C) Spiders

Spiders boomed because the lost birds ate them and competed with them for insects; hikers on Guam now carry a stick to knock the webs out of their pat...

Q 03/05

Which everyday painkiller is so toxic to brown tree snakes that Guam uses it as a poison?

A) Acetaminophen

B) Low-dose aspirin

C) Ibuprofen

D) Naproxen sodium

Answer · why

A) Acetaminophen

Acetaminophen, the drug in Tylenol, kills the snakes at a dose of just 80 milligrams, and in one treated test plot not a single snake survived.

Q 04/05

Guam's brown tree snakes climb wide, smooth poles with a newly found movement named after what?

A) An accordion

B) A corkscrew

C) A whip

D) A lasso

Answer · why

D) A lasso

A lasso is what the snake's body resembles as it loops round the pole and inches upward, adding a fifth mode of snake movement to the four that had st...

Q 05/05

Brown tree snakes climbing into equipment on Guam caused over 1,600 of what in one 20-year span?

A) Power outages

B) Flight delays

C) House fires

D) Road crashes

Answer · why

A) Power outages

Power outages follow when a snake climbs the lines or crawls into a transformer, and the worst of them have blacked out the whole island.