Rumble: Hero rats detect landmines, tuberculosis

110 million landmines lie in the ground on every continent. It will cost $33 billion and at the present de-mining rate, it will take 1,100 years to clear them all.

70 people are killed or injured every day by landmines. That's one person every 15 minutes, 26,000 people per year. (More)

Bart Weetjens, an engineer with Apopo, a Belgian organization focusing on “vapour detection technology,” uses pouched rats to detect land mines and disease detection.

The rats are smart, thrive on repetitive tasks, have a top-notch sense of smell and are cheaper to train than dogs.


Watch also the second part of this video.

Via the HeroRAT website, you can help and adopt-a-rat. Choose between Allan, Chosen One, Kim and Ziko, all rats trained for mine detection.

Discovered via TrackerNews's editor's blog