<
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/12-02-2026/our-possums-are-a-problem-is-selena-gomez-the-solution>
"Last year, American pop star, actor and beauty mogul Selena Gomez launched a
surprising new expansion of her empire: Oreos. The chocolate and cinnamon
limited-edition creme cookies, described as “flavour-forward and
horchata-inspired”, popped up in hypnotic displays in supermarkets across the
country in July, complete with a giant rotating cookie that simply read “Oreo
Selena Gomez”. The promotional material claimed the cookies were “great for
movie night, and make wonderful birthday treats and music awards watch party
snacks”.
What neither Selena Gomez nor Big Oreo could ever have anticipated is that
these cookies, which feature music-themed designs including “Selena in the
Studio” and “Play Your Heart Out”, would become a crucial weapon in the war
against one of Aotearoa’s most infamous pests.
Nearly 200 years before the arrival of Selena Gomez Oreos, European settlers
first introduced possums to Aotearoa. They’ve been wreaking havoc on our
natural ecosystem ever since. Possums eat native birds and their eggs,
contributing to 25 million killed each year. They spread tuberculosis to
livestock, costing farmers $35 million a year. They devour fruit, berries and
young trees, depriving others of food and stunting the growth of native
forests. After a hard night’s destruction, they steal cosy holes in tree trunks
otherwise occupied by native birds.
While traditional possum control methods like hunting, trapping and poisoning
work well in the beginning, wildlife biologist Graham Hickling explains that
there are always “recalcitrant survivors” left in any pest management area.
“Some maybe had a bad experience with a trap or a bait – maybe they got whacked
by the trap but escaped, or didn’t eat enough bait and got a really bad stomach
ache,” he explains. “There’s also a personality effect – some possums are bold,
some are shy, some are cautious and exploratory, and others are just very
timid.”
Determined to solve our stubborn possum problem, Hickling recently ran a pilot
trial on a rural property in Leeston, Canterbury. He wanted to test whether
pre-feeding the possums near the trap would build up their confidence enough
that they would eventually put their head inside, much like a teenager
pre-loading on Cruisers before a party. In fact, the initial experiment
actually toyed with the idea of giving possums addictive psychoactive drugs to
increase their motivation and confidence to enter the trap, but ultimately
proved too challenging to execute.
“We wanted to try something that we could do in the field that mimicked the
effect of a psychoactive drug,” Hickling explains. “And that’s when I came
across this psychological paper which suggested that a combination of fat and
sugar was quite addictive.” That finding, combined with a US study on rats that
used Oreo cookies, sent Hickling down to the local New World. “It just so
happened that they had these Selena Gomez Oreos, which I hadn’t even heard of.
They had both cinnamon and chocolate, which possums like, and they were on
sale.”"
Via Esther Schindler, who wrote "You could go a lifetime without the
opportunity to write a headline like this."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
