23.
Rats (HeroRATs)
 |
| Year of the Rat |
Mine detection
by rats? Apopo?
I never heard
of this until we came to Cambodia. Here in Cambodia, everybody knows what Apopo
is. I know 2020 is the Chinese year of the rat,
but that has nothing to do with Apopo.
On the way back from Bayon Temple, Mr.
Touch stopped and asked if we wanted to see this. He mentioned in his broken
English that this would be a good time to start a tour. I did not understand
what he meant but found out more after we entered their offices.
 |
| Welcome Sign |
Rats are nocturnal creatures, they sleep during the day. It is not that one can
just walk into Apopo and they demonstrate how a rat sniffs for a buried mine. But
in the morning hours the rats here are trained to still be up but are getting
sleepy. A rat’s attention span is about 3 hours max for any tasks asked from
them.
 |
| HeroRATS Can Systematically Check a Tennis Court Sized Area In <30 Min. A Metal Detector Would Take 4 Days. |
The
introduction to the tour is a bit long-winded and it takes time to set it all
up, inform everybody who is on the tour how it works, give background info
about Apopo, etc. They made us read some info on posters first, so we could
understand what Apopo was all about. Language issues
may have made them seem ‘rude’ but I am sure they had their reasons to make
sure we understood more of the details.
 |
| Awww - So Cute |
This, again,
was like taking a class in school.
This link, and there are
many more links on the web, show what those little heroes are all about. Who
would have thought those rats would be so good and helpful.
ONLY after we
understood the introduction did they all show us what these trained rats can
do.
We had a short
demonstration on the premises, the rat finding a randomly buried, but no longer
fused grenade. We saw that the method to find ordinances was very careful and
practical and the rat was very efficient. Our rat found the planted grenade in
no time, running to the handler for the banana reward it knows it gets once it
finds something.
 |
| A HeroRAT Working in the Field - Hard to See So Look Above the Blue Arrow |
Who thought of
this?
The first to
start using rats to find these explosives was a Belgian Zen Priest named Bart Weetjens around 1995 who explained
himself in this TED talk video.
A
rat’s weight is too light to trigger an ordinance. While only working in the
early daylight hours, parts of the rats are covered in sunscreen lotion, to
prevent sunburn on their delicate ears and tails. Normally, being nocturnal
they would not need that, but in the sun, even in the early morning hours,
their handlers look out for them. The handlers want to have happy rats.
A
rat’s life is constantly sniffing for food; they sniff, sniff, and sniff all
the time. Their noses are extremely sensitive. Once properly trained they never
miss a mine or grenade or any other explosive.
 |
| Rats Are Very Curious |
Training is reinforced by a
clicker in the handler’s hands. Sniff,
sniff… hear a click…food. Repeat. That
is how it goes minute after minute in the trained rat’s brain.
The
rat is conditioned to respond to the clicker almost from birth. It is a long
training the rats have to go through, it takes 9 months to make it work, and
they have daily lessons. Their handlers are dedicated people who have developed
this skill of training rats and they call their rats their friends.
The
process seems odd and unreliable but like I said, the rats never make a
mistake, they find mines, or explosives better than the best electronic
equipment otherwise used.
 |
| And Very Cute |
It’s
just amazing to see.
These
rats find around 3000 mines per year, on a global scale. They have freed so far
18 million square meters of mines worldwide, saving hundreds of lives and even
more people from being invalids. 80%
of people stepping on mines are innocent people. Of those 46% are children.
The
work the rats do enables the land to be usable again. It is cleared for
agriculture, development or access for other basic needs.
So
many other countries in the world still have mines in the ground. Afghanistan
is the worst, followed by Cambodia. But there are many other countries still
full of landmines. Those rats are being used in many other countries besides
Cambodia.
 |
| He's Wearing His Working Harness |
Their
delicate noses, their sense of smell are very useful. It does take training,
dedicated, long time training to do that. The Apopo Center we visited is a museum
to demonstrate how these rats operate, not just any rat but the African Giant Pouched Rats.
Those
rats are being trained carefully; all training is done in Africa.
The
only training center in the world for these rats is in Morogoro, Tanzania. Even
the engine noises made by the cars or trucks or mopeds used during shipments
are carefully introduced during the training.
All
of Cambodia at this time has only 50 trained rats to sniff, sniff, and sniff.
 |
| Mine Contamination as of November 2016 |
The
rats do not perform well under stress. Even the handlers keep quiet while the
rats work. Chatting among the handlers is highly discouraged. But once the rat
is ‘happy’, it can concentrate on sniff, sniff… click…food. Rats are being shipped
all over the globe to work on a daily basis.
Ah,
yes, the rats are also used to detect TB and are better than any other means of
finding Tuberculosis. That training would be done in Morogoro, too. Those rats
are truly little heroes.
HeroRATs.
