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Rats: de-mining hero rats



The Apopo Rats Visitor Centre in Siem Reap, Cambodia, demonstrates how rats can detect landmines.

African Giant Pouched Rats (also known as Gambian Giant Rats) are trained to sniff the ground and scratch when they detect a landmine. That’s why they are called hero rats. 

APOPO is an acronym for Anti-Personnel Landmines Removal Product Development. Apopo is a not-for-profit humanitarian non-government organization (NGO). 

Apopo, alongside the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC), is conducting humanitarian landmine clearance in northern Siem Reap. When the land is cleared of mines, the safe land is returned to the villagers so that they can travel safely across their land to farm it. 

There are 65 countries around the world still dealing with the effects of landmines, including about 900 square kilometres of Cambodia. There were estimated to be 4-6 million landmines in Cambodia, mostly after 1979. Cambodia has the world's highest ratio of mine amputees per capita with 64,000 reported casualties since 1979. 

APOPO's founder, Belgian-born Bart Weetjens, began training the rats in Tanzania, Africa. Tanzania continues to be the training centre for all of the rats used for landmine clearance. 

Rats have an acute sense of smell. They undergo nine months of training to sniff out the chemical compounds of TNT found in landmines and other explosive remnants of war (and they must pass a rigorous test to be accredited with the International Mine Action Standards). 

They ignore scrap metal, which makes them much faster at detecting landmines than human de-miners with metal detectors. One rat can systematically check an area the size of a tennis court in less than 30 minutes. A human de-miner with a metal detector would take up to four days to check the same area. 

Rats are also light and do not trigger the explosion. Rats can also be taught to detect tuberculosis (TB).

The rats, 29 of them in Cambodia, wear small harnesses attached to wire held by their human handlers. The rats indicate where landmines are by scratching the ground. Their handlers (de-miners) reward their rats with food, mark the spot on a map, and the mines are later safely deactivated. 





























MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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