Saving lives

AFRICA: Rats have a mixed reputation. They are kept as lab animals or pets, but many people fear them as disease carriers. Now rats are becoming real-life heroes: they are helping to clear Mozambique of landmines.

The African country’s 15-year civil war, which ended in 1992, left up to three million unexploded landmines in the ground. Trying to find and remove the mines remains dangerous and expensive. Some years ago, Bart Weetjens, a Belgian expert on rodents, suggested using rats for the job. His social enterprise Apopo now runs the HeroRat programme, which trains rats as mine detectors.

Rats have a very good sense of smell, are intelligent and are cheaper to keep than dogs. Rats are also more effective than metal detectors, which tend to give many false alarms from stray pieces of metal. And rats are generally too light to trigger an explosion.

In mine-search operations, the rats run along wires stretched between two handlers. When the rats stop and begin to dig, it means they have found a mine. In 2009, HeroRats found hundreds of mines and other explosives, and helped to clear 720,000 square metres of land in Mozambique.

When the rats begin to dig, it means they have found a mine.

It turns out that rats have other uses, too. Far from being disease carriers, they can help in the fight against tuberculosis. Trained HeroRats can smell the bacteria in patients as a first step to a diagnosis. As you’ll read on the HeroRat website: “Rats and humans make a great partnership, in working towards making the world a safer place.”