Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Why plane crashes are getting weirder

As the obvious fixes are found, we discover less and less likely ways that things can go wrong

Thinkstock Photos 
issue 11 April 2015

In the late 1980s, the parks service in the United States were concerned about the deterioration of the stonework on the Lincoln Memorial. So they asked the maintenance staff why the stone was decaying.

The crew explained that they used high-power sprays every fortnight to clean the masonry. The water penetrated cracks and joins, weakening the stone. But they needed to spray to get rid of the large volume of bird droppings. So they erected bird nets. These scarcely worked, and were unpopular with tourists, so the parks service called in the maintenance workers again and asked, ‘Why are there so many birds?’

‘The birds come to feed on the spiders,’ they said. ‘And the spiders are there to eat the midges.’ After dark, midges covered the memorial. The spiders came to eat the midges, and the birds came to eat the spiders.

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