Some of you may have already heard of the "Hero Rats". They are funded by APOPO which is an acronym that translates into English as "Anti-Personnel Landmine Detection Product Development". Rats have an excellent sense of smell,are intelligent and trainable,cheap to keep,abundant and too light to set off land mines. They receive their training at a facility in Tanzania with 15,000 deactivated mines to train on. The first step is to recognize TNT by smell,then they are rewarded with a piece of banana. Once they complete their training in the lab they take to the field wearing a harness held by two trainers. After completion of the field level they go to work finding real mines and saving lives of the children who are often killed while playing near live landmines. Rats can also be trained to detect tuberculosis in sputum samples when other methods fail and can work more quickly that a lab technician (I wanted to say lab rat,but wouldn't let myself!)
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