Herald & Lantern 1 July 81

35

Since prehistoric times, humans have domesticated and trained animals to help them perform onerous chores. It started with cavenfen training dogs to help in thd hunt, and today people are still dreaming up new schemes to make animals do their dirty work, according to the current issue of National Wildlife magazine. Over the years pigeons, especially, have been found to be cdoperatiye workers. “During the four-month Prussian siege (of Paris in 1870, pigeons carried hundreds of thousands of official and private messages to and from' the outside world,” says the Federation's bimonthly publication. “The messages were inserted in a small goose quill and attached by waxy silken thread to the strongest tail feather." DURING WORLD WAR II British forces dropped pigeons in baskets from airplanes so that local residents could retrieve them, attach any information that might be of in-#

Meaning Work Is For The Birds?

terest to allied forces and then release the birds. After cifcling the area once or twice the pigeons would head for home, perhaps hundreds of miles atoay. Researchers now think pigeons may have a future as assembly line inspectors — checking for defects in drug capsules or electronic equipment, for example. Human inspectors tend to make errors about 15 percent of the time, whereas pigeons make errors only one percent of the time, one psychologist found. "AND THEY DON’T get bored," adds National Wildlife. Studies have found that they can remain on the job for three days straight without sacrificing accuracy. The birds do loaf on the job, though, so most pigeon projects call for three birds inspecting in tandem, each a check on the others." The technique used in training pigeons and other

animals is called positive reinforcement, developed by B.F. Skinner, the famed behaviorist. It involves using food as a reward — when, for instance, a pigeon spots a defective drug capsule - and ignor ing wrong behavior. Animals are not starved; the reward is part of a daily ration. BRITISH SUBMARINE commanders employed this technique during World War ID Their submarines would release large amounts of bread in the water, and gulls would

flock to it. After a while, the birds gathered naturally at the sight of a long, .dark shadow sliding underwater. Spottprs ashore alerted the authorities. No one knows how many German U-boats fell victim to a flock of hungry gulls. Positive reinforcement has also been used to train macaques, short-tailed monkeys, to harvest coconuts from the tallest palms in the fields of southern Thailand. And in Boston, a capuchin mqnkey named Hellion does household chores for a

The State We're In Taking the Axe to the Pinelands Act

The struggle to dismantle provisions of the Pinelands Act in order to facilitate development near Atlantic City—especially In Atlantic and Cape May counties—goes on and on. Now we’ve got a bill introduced into the Senate (S-3335) by Senator Steven Perskie of Atlantic.County which is very artfully contrived to hamper the Pinelands Commission in its legislated duty to enforce cbherent regional planning in the Protection Area of the Pinelands National Reserve. . The Perskie bill would do this by amending th^ existing Pinelands Protection Act, putting the development process into the hands of each municipality, without regional

R N E R-

Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer Even though this book was oa the hardback best seller list, ahd immediately jumped to the top when it came out in paperback, for some reason I put off reading it. I had a general idea of the plot, and it just didn't appeal to me. But when I did begin reading the book, I couldn’t put it down. I realized I had thoroughly enjoyed the author's Shall We Tell the President, and although this novel is nothing like that book, Archer's mastery of character and plot forces you to keep turning the pages. The story follows the intertwined lives of two men, born on the same day. William Katie is a Boston aristrocrat, wealthy at birth and destined to follow his father iuthe family banking business. Abel Rosnovski wallthe illegitimate son of a Polish baron, and was raised in a peasant's hovel. When World War I swept over Europe, Poland was invaded by the Germans and then the Russians, who sent Abel to a prison camp. After years of incarceration, he escaped and eventually made his way to the United States, where his intelligence and industry earn him the first steps in the ladder of success. He becomes the owner of a chain of hotels. The chapters switch back and forth between kane and Abel, and recount* their marriages, their problems with their businesses, and their children. Kane has a son; Abel, a daughter-and — you guessed it — they meet and fall in love. However, even though Kane and Abel's lives touched each other only briefly, events led them to have a bitter animosity to each other. Most readers should enjoy this book. Leslie Steyson is the pseudonym for a very real area bookstore proprietor.

quidance of the Commission. This, of course, would make each local government a much more pliable target for well-heeled representatives of the building and development industry. Worse than that, it opens the region to scattered development and the public costs associated with it. THE MEASURE WOULD BECLOUD the existing cdnformance process of the Pinelands Protection Act, which ■ has local governments meshing their planning and zonfiig with the overall standards of the Commission, and, indeed, would put off conformance for another year. * What’s overlooked iri this simplistic game is the welfare of everybody else in New Jersey. As it now stands, the Pinelands Act saves taxpayers a lot of money by assuring that development goes where the necessary services like water supplies, sewers and roads are the most accessible, and hence the cheapest. But with random and uncoordinated development, those basic services wouldn’t b£ available in remote areas. Other results would be increased conversion of farmlands to development and greater demands for services subsidized by taxpayers. Ironically, this latest effort m overturn the future wellbeing of the Pinelands comes just when more and more local governmertts are learning that the conforming process of meshing their development laws with the master plan really is an easy thing to Jive with. UNDER THE PERSKIE BILL, the Pinelands Commis sion would be restricted in its review process to subdivisions of no less than 200 housing units or 30 or more acres of commercial development. The basic premise of the Pinelands Protection Act—to coordinate development for the least possible impact on the sensitive aquifers of the region—Would be destroyed by letting smaller developments, which are bound to be in the huge majority, be decided at the Ideal level, with planning disputes to be resolved by an adiftinistrative law judge. Currently, all development, no matter how large or small, is controlled by the planning process of local governments, provided they are in conformance with the Pinelands Master Plan. THE FACT THAT THIS destructive bit of legislation was introduced right after governor Brendan Byrne left the country for an extended pertod might be taken by some as considerably more than coincidental. It even has Senator Joseph Merlirio, the acting governor, as a cosponsor. This development also is seen as closely related to a cutoff of federal grants for Pinelands land acquisitions (the Carter administration earmarked $8 million for that purpose in the 1982 budget). Representatives William Hughes and Edwin Forsythe, whose districts take in most of the Pinelands area, have caused division about the Pinelands program within New Jersey's Congressional Delegation, with the predictable result that no money is to be forthcoming for land acquisition in the Pinelands. David Moore is executive director of the N.J. Cohserva tion Foundation.

24-year-old man who is pafalyzed from the. shoulders down as a result of a car accident. Hellion can turn on the lights, put ,cassettes into a tape recorder, retrieve food from the refrigerator and feed her owner. THE MILITARY HAS a long history of putting animals to work. In onfe battle with "the Romans, Hannibal set elephants in his front lines, ready' to charge. His plan backfired, however. Spooked by trumpets and irritated by the enemies' darts, the elephants turned and stampeded into their own cavalry. Today, the US. Coast Guard is training pigeons’ to spot orange, yellow, and red — the colors of life jackets, buoys, rafts, qnd flags. The pigeons will be carried in a plexiglass bubble beneath a helicopter and will peck at an electrical switch when they see’ these colored objects floating on the ocean below. THE NAVY. MEANWHILE. has long used sea lion| and other marine ’ mammals to retrieve dr deliver objects at great depths. "Apparently,’’ says National Wildlife, "they work beUer 4han humans, who require scuba gear, decompression' chambers, medical person- . nel, good weather, and a few days to complete a mis,sion." A Navy porpoise has carried tools and messages to

aquanauts in a lab 200 feet below, off the California coast ' Sea lions have recovered antisubmarine test rockets a I depths of 490 feet And a killer whale has • been trained to recover dummy torpedoes ; from depths of 1,600 feei. during World war I, pigeons were commonly used as "spies." carrying messages back and forth across- jmemy lines Whenever the Gentians occupied new territory, they made it a practice to destroy all the pigeons in the area. An estimated one million Belgian pigeons' were captured or'killed in that' war. probably the most famous was Cher Ami. a plucky British rac ing pigeon When an American battalion ^d vanced too far ahead of its lines, it was surrounded, and neither humans nor birds could get through heavy fire to report the batallions's location. The last hope was Cher Ami Through the fusillade of fire, the little racing pigeon rose, heading for home carrying the vital information," recounts National Wildlife "Suddenly, a burst of shrapnel ripped its leg. But it didn't stop. Gamely, it flew on, reaching the base in 25 minutes. The message, attached to the wounded leg, hung from a few shreds of sipew." Today, Cher Ami’s stuffed body is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. D C. A real war hero, it serves as a reminder of the amazing feats animals can be trained to perform for humans.

Plants Join In

Garden Pest Fight

Bv Ed Harnett COURT HOUSE ™. All is ’. not dusting and spraying in the never ending battle between man and the variety of {>ests thpt munches his flowers qnd vegetables. Plants themselves can be used to fight garden pests, says Larry E. Newbold. county agricultural agent. SOME SERVE as "trap crop" or ' -acrificial" plants, such as nastur tiums, which lure aphids away from other plants; or radishes, ithich attract onion maggots Others actually repel insects. The lists of these is long and suggests many interplanting schemes to prevent inroads by pests. The list includes: DILL (REPELS •cucumber beetles, stinkbugs); chives (aphids.); geraniums (aphids); Peruvian ground cherry. Nicandra physalodes 'flies); nastur-' tiums (beetles that attack vine crops Euphorbia lathyris (very high mole repcllency, i< cording to reports from ;>outh Africa). Also, onions (potato bugs, bean beetles, "beach

tree borers, aphids); mint tcahbage moths, flies); garlic (Japanese beetles, aphids, others); basil (flies, beetles); cosmos and asters (Mexican bean beetles); mustard (cabbage worms i;- tomatoes (asparagus Wpetlei; asparagus <nematodes) and marigolds (kills nematodes and make tomato plants happy). Seeks To Check Spray Effects COURT HOUSE - Tile Citizens Association for the Protection of the Environment (CAPE) asks that anyone who experiences ill effects from exposure to pesticide spraying in the

county notify it

CAPE offer a list of. possible symptoms, including headaches, nausea, dizziness, and twitching, which may result from

such exposure

It a|so ureges beekeeper* to Wport any losse* attributable to spraying. CAPE may be reached al Box-33, Court Jfous? 08210.

WALTER R. BOBINSKY cHonAynan C a»«~trv Maconrv PAINTINO Small. Pepaiivs

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967-5446 AVALON N J 0820?^