http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/09/07/herorats.detect.landmines/index.html?hpt=C2
This is awesome. I really don’t like rats, but somehow I think they are cute little furry things. So in Mozambique, a company called APOPO is training these rodents how to sniff out…no not bombs, but land mines. Mine sniffing rats? Hecks yea!
Bart Weetjens is the “brains and buddhist monk” behind the mind sniffing rats. I get the “brains” part, but what does being a Buddhist Monk have to do with this?
Anyway, so these rats are native to Africa, so they are immune to the tropical diseases in Mozambique and in Tanzania (where they are used to detect uh…tuberculosis? <<–CNN didn’t say anything about these rats.
They begin training at like 4 weeks old, just when they begin to see. Now, the price to train just ONE rat is…drum roll – $7,700!! PER RAT!! But apparently that is only half the cost of training a mind sniffing canine, which is the most common animal used for this type of job. But $7,000 for a rat is a lot of money.
Why would you use these rats in the first place? Mr. Weetjen said that they are so light in weight, that when they step on the mines, the triggers aren’t, well, triggered. Therefore, if you don’t want your Labrador Buddy blown to pieces, then get a rat to do the job (I apologize if any of you actually had your Labrador named Buddy blown to pieces, and did not mean to offend you).
Now what does this article have to do with the environment?
- Increase in canine population
- Significant decrease in number of forgotten mines (More mines discovered)
- Substantially less hazardous to people living in the mine-infested areas
- Development can continue in those areas
The Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining has been optimistic about using more rats to detect the mines. These rats have been trained to sniff in holes, and when they detect TNT, they are taught to scratch the ground with their paws (is that what they are called on rats?) which then notifies the team that there is an active mine in that hole.
Africa has seen decades of war, of who knows how many land mines are still hidden all over the vast continent? Although Mr. Weetjen said that convincing the public to use more rats for this purpose isn’t going well, I think that eventually they will catch on to how awesome these rats are. In just one day, one of these highly trained special ops rats can uncover an average of 17 mines. Wow.
