In a small village in the Bornes jungle, health workers decided to spray the straw huts with DDT in order to control the mosquito population responsible for the spread of malaria. The lizards that normally inhabit the walls of the huts consumed large doses of the DDT and died. The village cats, in turn ate the dying lizards and themselves died. The cats demise resulted in an infestation of rats into the village. The lizards’ death left the straw-consuming caterpillars free to multiply (the lizards feed on the caterpillars) and eventually they gobbled up the straw thatched roofs of the village huts.

The Emerging Order, J. Rifkin, p. 70