For Sniffing Out Land Mines, a Platoon of Twitching Noses

[PfcHammer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/18/international/18RAT.html

For Sniffing Out Land Mines, a Platoon of Twitching Noses
By MICHAEL WINES

Published: May 18, 2004


ONDOLA, 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.

[THUNDER HANDS]

1. kinda fitting

A bunch of rats started this war and now a bunch or rats are helping fight it.

[Fovea]

2. This is such a great partnership

Rats love humans, all things considered.

I have two as pets, and they are a joy.