Guest guest Posted May 21, 2004 Report Share Posted May 21, 2004 - Linda Furness Le Petit Chien Tuesday, May 18, 2004 9:11 PM AR-News: Rats used to sniff out landmines -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----Van: Núria Querol-GEVHA [ gevha @ AnimalProtector.com ] (remove 2 spaces) For Sniffing Out Land Mines, a Platoon of Twitching Noses By MICHAEL WINES GONDOLA, Mozambique — Just about every method of detecting land mines has a drawback. Metal detectors cannot tell a mine from a tenpenny nail. Armored bulldozers work well only on level ground. Mine-sniffing dogs get bored, and if they make mistakes, they get blown up. The Gambian giant pouched rat has a drawback, too: It has trouble getting down to work on Monday mornings. Other than that, it may be as good a mine detector as man or nature has yet devised. 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. "Animal detection, with dogs in particular, has increased very much in the last three or four years," Havard Bach, the top expert on demining for the Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining, said in a telephone interview. But in many cases, he said, "it would probably be better to use rats than dogs." Rats are abundant, cheap and easily transported. At three pounds, they are too light to detonate mines accidentally. They can sift the bouquet of land-mine aromas far better than any machine. Unlike even the best mine-detecting dog or human, they are relentlessly single-minded. "Throw a stick for a dog to fetch, and after 10 times the dog will say, `Get it yourself, buddy,' " Mr. Weetjens said. "Rats will keep working as long as they want food." Full story http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/18/international/18RAT.html?hp= & pagewanted=print & position= Domains - Claim yours for only $14.70/year Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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