Rat advocates across the United States want to show the world the benefits the rodents can provide. From ferreting out land mines to finding lost people, trained rats can do a lot.
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At least twice the size of the common brown rats found in cities, African giant pouched rats like Runa are best known for ferreting out landmines and other explosive material on old battlefields in Angola, Mozambique and Cambodia, earning them the nickname"hero-rats." Efforts are underway to expand the use of their keen sense of smell to finding people trapped in collapsed buildings, detecting diseases in laboratory samples and alerting officials to illegal goods at ports and airports.
On a recent day, her trainers hid small vessels of chamomile tea under the dirt in a box. As soon as she was released from her cage, Runa's tiny nose was abuzz with twitching as she set out to work. Within seconds she had found all the vessels, and was racing over to suck on a syringe filled with a pellet-and-banana smoothie.
Rats can spread disease like leptospirosis, which on rare occasions can lead to meningitis and cause the kidneys and liver to fail.Izzy Szott, a behavioral research scientist at the Tanzania-based organization APOPO, which is training the rats to work for governments, said she was not surprised to hear rats had been named enemy No. 1, but she wants people to know the full picture.
"We need to understand the capabilities that these animals have and see them in a humane way and treat them in a humane way," she added.
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