Need To Find Some Explosives - Are Rats The Answer

So as a species I’m sure that most of you will consider what I’ll be writing about today a pest or vermin which spread disease. The reason I’m going to be discussing this species today is actually because of a program I was watching on Netflix the other day.

Rats are an amazing group and there are actually 51 different species within the group Rattus, some of which are endemic to certain areas such as the Polynesian rat whilst others have been transported across the world mainly through human activities such as the brown rat. The brown rat has a range which covers nearly the entire world and this is due to them stowing away on ships during the age of expansion.

There is however a certain species I was planning on writing about today and that is African giant muroid rodents. This species as the name suggests can originally be found across Africa and is currently causing all sorts of problems as an invasive species in the Florida Keys were a private breeder allowed several to escape and are believe to be the source of the 2003 monkeypox outbreak in the area. Usually however they are found in colonies made up of around twenty individuals in forests or thickets. They feed on vegetables, insects, crabs and invertebrate and use their pouches to carry large amount of food back to their burrows.  They have rather poor eyes sight and so usually depend on an excellent sense of smell.

pouched rat, which isn’t actually a true rat but are from a branch of

It is in fact its sense of smell which has brought them to my attention.

What does a dog; bee and pouched rat have in common? 

There are all used as search animals to smell things which have been hidden such as money, drugs and in the case of the pouched rat explosives. That’s right pouched rats are being used in different areas of the world to sniff out landmines. For instance in Cambodia there are teams of them attempting to clear the millions of lost mines due to years of conflict. This is important work as in 2013 there were 3,308 casualties worldwide from landmines and most of these casualties were made up of children or farms.

Rats are an ideal animal for this jobs as they are highly intelligent as well as being light enough to be able to walk over the mines without setting them of by accident. An individual is able to search over 200 square meters in 20 minutes. This is achieved by the rat being on two ropes to guide it in a grid like pattern to efficiently search the area.

Since 1997 APOPO (the Belgium non-profit organisation) has helped clear 13,200 mines in Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola and Cambodia (2015), which has opened up a vast area of land which was previously too dangerous to enter.

Not only are the pouched rats able to smell explosives they can also be trained to sniff out tuberculosis which has a how other load of benefits for humans. So although rats can spread disease (not as much as you might think though) there are some out there working to help humanity correct its mistakes.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this link from BBC Earth