Giant Hero Rats sniff out TNT
In Cambodia, Gambian giant rats are being used to find the nearly two million land mines spread out across the country. African giant pouched rodent, cat sized have bad vision but an extraordinary sense of smell, especially TNT. These rodents are light enough to walk over the mines without setting them off, and use their noses to find the explosives quickly. One rat can search over 200 square meters in 20 minutes. Since 1997, these big sniffers have found 13,200 mines from minefields in Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola, and, most recently, in Cambodia. Finding these hidden explosives is challenging and dangerous: People with metal detectors not only risk their lives, they work slowly, stopping to investigate every suspicious ping. Trained dogs, while commonly used, are expensive and tough to transport. It has cheek pouches like a hamster. These cheek pouches allow it to gather up nuts at night for storage underground. It has been known to stuff its pouches so full of nuts so as to be hardly able to squeeze through the entrance of its burrow. The burrow consists of a long passage with side alleys and several chambers, one for sleeping and the others for storage.
When the trained heros find a landmine, they stop and scratch at the TNT-scented spot, which the human de-miners mark and come back later to excavate. The animals only live about eight years unless….
