Video: Of Rats and Land mines

PRESENTATION

Landmines stink like hell, and rats have a very good smell. That's roughly the slogan of the so-called APOPO project in Tanzania. There indigenous African rats are trained to detect landmines. These rats are deployed in former conflict zones where landmines form a hazard. World wide it is a big problem. In 66 countries there are still land mines, which claim victims everyday. Also it makes the rare farming lands unusable. The rats of APOPO go to Mozambique for 3 years now. This country suffered from a bloody civil war until 1992, and 10,000nds of land mines are left behind. The rats there prove a big success, and APOPO is planning to expand operations.

BETA LENGTH 3'40"

This proud young lady is called Jennifer. She is one of the 300 rats at the training site at Morogoro in the heart of Tanzania.

SOUNDBITE RAT SNIFFING

At sun rise when it's still not too hot, Jennifer is sniffing for landmines. There are 1,500 neutralized mines buried here for practicing.

SOUNDBITE SNIFFING

QUOTE STEVE MLAMBITI, rat trainer
If there is a mine the rat will stop at the position where the mine is. It will associate by grooming and then after scratching.

The rats are motivated to do all this for a tasty reward after finding a mine.

SOUNDBITE RAT EATING BANANA

Steve is one of the 60 staff members here. His life changed because of an animal usually digging through filth and garbage.

QUOTE STEVE MLAMBITI
It's improving my life. If I take care of this. Taking care for the treatment, giving enough food. It's good my life through rats.

SOUNDBITE BART WEETJENS CHATTING WITH STAFF

The idea came from its Belgium founder Bart Weetjens.
He is a practicing buddhist who has been working with rodents for many years.

QUOTE BART WEETJENS
Rats have a lot of advantages. They're much easier to train than for instance a dog, and with the low levels of education in this environment, rats form a very suitable detector.

So these small heroes are treated as children, and a cuddle here and there is common.

SOUNDBITE RAT CUDDLING MAN

However there is work to do, and it starts indoors by training to trace TNT, an explosive that is used in most land mines.

SOUNDBITE CLICK, REWARD

After work they relax in kennels, and there are cages for playing and for romantic moments leading to procreation. All looking like a good rat life, but still after 9 monhts of training they have to go and serve in the mine fields of Mozambique.

SOUNDBITE MINE BLAST

QUOTE BART WEETJENS
They're too light to set off land mines. We haven't lost any animal in operation. We loose some of old age and diseases through food poisoning. But we haven't lost any animal in a mine field.

The rats found over 1,500 explosives in Mozambique, and an area of 240 soccer fields can be used again by the population. For just over 1 Dollar per square meter, which is half than the usual cost for demining.

SOUNDBITE RAT SNIFFLING

And these precious pointed noses are now even sniffing for more. They started training to smell turberculosis which is endemic in Tanzania.

QUOTE BART WEETJENS
Where microscopes in labs are accurate up to 60 per cent on routine basis. Detection rats can screen people and find 80 per cent of suspected TB patients.

Here the rats are training on human samples containing the TB bacteria. If it finds one it starts scratching.

QUOTE JOHN FIDELIS, trainer
So the scratching indication we use it for indication for the rat to get reward.

For the time being detecting mines remains the core activity, and with success. So the programme is about to expand to other landmines countries as Angola and Congo.