Landmine Hunting Rats
The ever-informative Mirabilis points to this fascinating article on how animals are being put to work in unorthodox ways. For example, alpacas apparently make excellent shepherds. The bit that interested me most was about the mine-hunting rats:
In Mozambique a Belgian charity called Apopo has deployed African giant pouched rats to help clear some of the 500,000 landmines that litter the landscape after the country’s long years of civil strife. Elsewhere dogs have sometimes been used to clear the detritus of war. But rats are lighter, so less likely to detonate a buried mine, and smaller, so easier to transport. They also work harder and learn faster than dogs.
That got me thinking:
