Bomb-Sniffing Rats Have Cleared Over 100 Million Square Meters Of Landmines

An organization called APOPO trains African giant pouched rats to detect landmines, and by the end of 2023 its teams had cleared more than 100 million square meters of contaminated land across seven countries, an area roughly the size of the city of Paris, removing 31,739 landmines, 90,140 explosive remnants of war, 36,205 items of small arms and ammunition, and 2,731 cluster munitions in the process, with an estimated direct and indirect benefit to more than two million people in the communities where they work. The rats, known as HeroRATs, are African giant pouched rats trained from a young age using food rewards to associate the smell of explosives with a treat, then guided across mined terrain by handlers who follow their body language as they sniff systematically across designated areas. What makes them remarkably suited to the task is also what makes them perfectly safe to use: they weigh between one and one and a half kilograms, far too light to trigger a pressure-activated landmine, and their noses can cover 300 to 400 square meters of ground per day, up to 50 times faster than a human deminer working with a metal detector.

APOPO was founded in Belgium in the 1990s and now operates primarily in Cambodia, Angola, Azerbaijan, Zimbabwe, and South Sudan, with previous programs in Laos, Mozambique, and Turkey. Cambodia alone accounts for nearly 50 million square meters of the total cleared, one of the most heavily mined countries on Earth after decades of conflict that left deadly ordnance scattered across agricultural land, forests, and the approaches to UNESCO World Heritage sites. In 2015, Mozambique was declared free of known landmines, a milestone in which APOPO's work across five provinces played a significant role. APOPO also trains its rats to detect tuberculosis from sputum samples, screening dozens of samples per session at a speed and accuracy that outperforms standard laboratory microscopy, and has identified tens of thousands of TB cases that would have otherwise gone undetected. Handlers arrive at minefields at dawn and begin walking their rats across the fields in measured grid patterns, the handlers moving steadily, the rats working their noses continuously across the soil, stopping to scratch where a mine is detected. It is one of the quieter examples of applied science operating in the world right now, and it is saving lives on a scale that very few people outside the demining community fully appreciate.

Source:https://apopo.org/apopo-reaches-milestone-in-landmine-clearance/