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Runaway1956 writes:

Rats trained to sniff out landmines in Cambodia
Unexploded devices said to have killed nearly 20,000 Cambodians and wounded 44,000 since 1979

Pit, only two and with just one eye, needed only 11 minutes before he detected a deadly mine buried in a Cambodian field, work that humans with metal detectors could have taken up to five days to investigate. But Pit is not human. He is part of a team of elite rats, imported from Africa, that Cambodia is training to sniff out landmines that still dot the countryside after decades of conflict.

"Under a clear sky, he would have been quicker," said Hul Sokheng, a veteran Cambodian deminer, who oversees training of 12 handlers on how to work with 15 large rats to clear Cambodia's farmland and rural villages of bombs. "These are life-saving rats," he said under rainy skies.

Their work could prove vital in a country where unexploded devices, including mines and unexploded shells, have killed nearly 20,000 Cambodians and wounded about 44,000 since 1979, according to the Cambodian government. Pit is able to smell highly explosive TNT inside landmines, watched over by two handlers who tie him up to a rope as the one-eyed rat searches through the grass.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/rats-trained-to-sniff-out-landmines-in-cambodia-1.3149277?cmp=rss

This particular story is "current events", sure enough - but I did a search for these rats and found several other, older stories.

http://www.vice.com/read/this-ngo-trains-giant-rats-to-clear-mine-fields-182

This story is especially interesting, http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/09/07/herorats.detect.landmines/index.html. "Nailing down the regimen was tricky. At one point in APOPO's early days, the rats performed perfectly in trials, making Weetjens suspicious. It turned out the rats were outsmarting the humans."

Oh, not just explosives, but diseases too: http://www.occupyforanimals.net/rats---the-apopo-herorats-detect-landmines-and-tuberculosis.html

Lots more stories here: https://www.apopo.org/en/. So - can we expect to see TSA handlers walking around our airports, with rats on leashes soon?

1. "Runaway1956" - https://soylentnews.org/~Runaway1956/
2. " Original Submission " - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=8283

printed from SoylentNews, Heroic Rats? on 2026-03-14 13:09:38