When people say that they use rats to sniff out deadly landmines, there’s no surprise if you think they let the mouse loose to run around and probably step on the mines, and go kaboom, indirectly helping humans to clear mines. But you’d be wrong, because they’re too light to trigger the mines. Then what?

APOPO, a Dutch organization operational in Tanzania, is training baby rats to become mine-sniffers. Apparently, they’re more efficient and affordable to train compared to dogs, and they’ve already proven their stuff in neighbouring Mozambique, where they’ve successfully cleared patches of land. Comparing to trained humans that can clear a 2000 square foot minefield in a full day, these rodents can do it in just two hours.

The training starts when the baby rats were just four weeks old, early enough for training them to overcome their natural fear of humans. They’re conditioned to associate a clicking sound with a food treat, and then trained to distinguish the trail of TNT. When they correctly identify explosives in tests, the click is sounded and they’re rewarded with a bit of banana. After some nine months of rigorous daily training, the sniffer rats are ready for work in the field.

The rodents are also being used to help screen samples for tuberculosis in Tanzanian hospitals, where lab tests are often only 60% accurate. In the future, members of APOPO explain, rats could be used to sniff out narcotics or locate people trapped after catastrophes. It’s just like that old book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie: If you train a mouse to save lives by sniffing out mines, he’ll want to learn how to save lives in a whole bunch of other really impressive and adorable ways, too. When the country spent billions to develop machines only to find out that dogs are the best mine sniffers, people are already using the cheapest bomb squad there is.

SOURCE via Telegraph