Thanks to James at Hell in a Handbasket for the link to this NY Times story about large rats being used to sniff out landmines:
Just after sunup on one dewy morning, on a football field-sized patch of earth in the Mozambican countryside, Frank Weetjens and his squad of 16 giant pouched rats are proving it. Outfitted in tiny harnesses and hitched to 10-yard clotheslines, their footlong tails whipping to and fro, the rats lope up and down the lines, whiskers twitching, noses tasting the air.Wanjiro, a sleek 2-year-old female in a bright red harness, pauses halfway down the line, sniffs, turns back, then sniffs again. She gives the red clay a decisive scratch with both forepaws. Her trainer, Kassim Mgaza, snaps a metal clicker twice, and Wanjiro waddles to him for her reward — a mouthful of banana and an affectionate pet.
"What Pavlov did with his dogs is exactly what we're doing here — very basic conditioning," said Mr. Weetjens, a lanky, 42-year-old Belgian who works for an Antwerp mine-removal group named Apopo. "TNT means food. TNT means clicking sound, means food. That's how we communicate with them."
Wanjiro was rewarded for sniffing out a TNT-filled land mine, one of scores buried a few inches below ground in the training field where she works out five days a week. Like all the training mines, this one was defused. But if the Mozambican authorities approve, she and her companions will move at year's end from dummies to live minefields — the world's first certified, professional mine-detecting rats.
Indeed, in a test in November along a southern Mozambique railway that was heavily mined during this country's 17-year civil war, teams of three giant pouched rats found every one of 20 live mines in a previously unsurveyed 4,300-square-foot swatch of land.
As a Rat Person, I have no problems with this at all. The rats don't weigh enough to set off the mines (so they're safe), and they're treated well. At the same time, they're providing a valuable service (who honestly thinks mine fields are a good thing?). This topic came up on several Pet Rat discussion lists, and the feeling was pretty much all the same: Good Rattie PR. In this case, rats are a valuable service animal.
BTW, the rats used are Gambians--Ben (in the Crispin Glover version of Willard) was a gambian, and you're right: They're HUGE! They can chew thru 1/8-inch wire cages almost as easily as a norwegian rat chews thru plastic.
Posted by: Victor at May 20, 2004 12:36 PM