After decades of wars and bloody conflics, some of which still rage on today, Destruction,
Misery and, death reign supreme in many countries of Africa.
But even in Countries were conflicts have died down in recent years, their deadly leagacies
continue to claim thousands of lives every year.
Through landmines and unexploded ordnance In Africa alone, they ve killed or maimed
over 8000 people in 2016, globally it were between 10,000 and 20,000 casualties.
Roughly 50% of them were children.
It is estimated that there are Currently over 55 million landmines and other explosives
in over 84 countries around the world rendering about 1.3 million acres of land useless.
Whats more, their removal is timeconsuming, difficult and expensive.
While one mine only costs between $3 and $30, the cost of removing it is with $300 to $1000
up to 300 times more expensive depending on the method.
There are a few possible methods to use: special armored demining vehicles or other High tech
tools.
Such and Ground penetrating radar.
Dogs that have been trained to sniff the presence of explosives and the most common method.
Manual clearance.
with handhelt metal detectors.
But there is a downside to everything.
Highendtools are exremely expensive and therefore typcially only used by the military.
Dogs are prone to tropical diseases, and their weight can easily set off a landmine.
In Addition they are also farily expensive.
a well trainied detection dog can cost up to 40000$.
And manual clearance is extremely slow because metal detectors are very inacurate.
tpyically yielding about one thousand false positives for every mine, which only gets
worse africas ironrich soil.
Ultimately none of these methods are very practical, especially for poor African countries
where this problem has the greatest impact As a result of this in many of the affected
areas Agricultural activities have been brought to a total halt and delivery of health services,
humanitarian aid and, road construction are hampered which in turn made millions of people
refugees But there is Hope.
In form of the most unlikely creature imaginable: a rat.
For almost 20 years now african Giant pounched Rats are being trained by the belgian aid
organisation APOPO in their Tanzanian based Headquauter and trainingfacilities . and with
great success.
The main goal of the project was to develop a tool that would allow the people in these
countries to address this life-threatening problem more independently using resouwrces
they have at hand The African giant pouched rat was ideal for
this for a multitude of reasons.
First This rat species endemic to sub-Saharan Africa and is very common and even considered
a pest in many regions.
Second, they very small - not nessesarily compared to other rat species as they are
roughly the size of a smaller house cat, but compared to dogs and humans.
This means They need little food, little space and most importantly they wont set off active
landmines by themselves.
Whats more, they are very intelligent and blessed with a sense of smell to rival that
of dogs, which is an adaptation to their nocturnal lifestyle and allows them to easily detect
buried explosives.
The only downside to this is that they are very susceptible to sunburn, making it nessesarly
to keep their ears and tails slathered with sunblock
But most importantly.
they are easily conditioned.
once they know doing a specific task will get them a tasty piece of banana they love
to repeat it as long as long as you reward them.
All of that makes them perfecty suited for detecting mines and they are fast as well:
they can each search 200 square metres of land in just 20 minutes; a person using a
metal detector would take up to five days for that.
their training is by no means easy, however.
It usally takes 9 months and around 5000$ (in total costs including staff salaries)
for a single rat to become an official HeroRAT.
First The rats need to be trained to differentiate between the smell of explosives and other
smells by rewarding them every time the correct sample is identified.
This alone takes several months.
In the next stage of their training they then have to prove their minesniffing capabilities
in the field.
For that APOPO established the most extensive training Minefield in Africa that allows them
to train the rats in near-to-real conditions.
Here the rats have to put their noses to the test in a series of courses, week after week.
led on a leash they have to systematically move up and down each course and indicate
where the pre-planted mines are buried.
When a rat sniffs a mine it scratches the surface at the spot pointing out the location
to the trainer.
For that she gets a reward.
The expectations are high, if a rat isnt performing it is withdrawn from training but kept on
as a playmate for the others.
At the end of their nine-month bootcamp they have to prove what they have learned.
In their final test they are not allowed to miss a single mine if they want to become
a HeroRat.
100% accuracy is demanded.
The Life of their trainers depens on it.
If their pass the test however they will get their offical license to head on mineclearing
missions around the world.
For the next 6ths months anyway, thats how long their HeroRat license lasts.
Then they have to return and to do the test again.
Some Herorats rats might serve for almost 8 years.
thats how long Giant pouch rats live - roughly 5 years longer than most other rat species.
In 2003, APOPO mine detection operations began in Mozambique.
They lasted for 9 years and together with traditional mine sweeping tecniques Mozambique
was officially declared free of all landmines in 2015.
In the process, they destroyed a total of 13,274 landmines and made 11,124,446 square
metres (1,110 ha; 2,750 acres) of land usable again.
As a result of the early success in monzambique APOPO implemented additonal demining operations
in Angola and Zimbabwe and even outside of Africa in countries such as cambodia, columbia
and vietnam.
Additonally work is already underway to apply a similar approach to other fields such Tuberculosis
screening.
Tuberculosis is still one of the deadliest and most contagious diseases in the world.
in poor countries microscopy is mainly used to detect it but this is slow, and imprecise.
It takes a laboratory technician one day to evaluate 20 samples and only 50% of TB positive
patients tested are actually identified correctly.
HeroRats need less than 5 minutes for that and are extremely accurate.
Since 2007 they are used to mass-screen at-risk populations and to retests samples that have
already been tested by microscopy.
In 2015 and 2016 alone, they could detected over 20,000 TB patients initially missed by
microscopy tests increasing the TB detection rate by over 40% and preventing hundrets of
thousands of potential followup infections.
All of this makes Herorats a title which was origianally only designed as a creative marketing
and fundraising campaign to true Heros in every sense of the word and everyone involved
in the project as well