The Belgian registered charity “Apopo” based in Tanzania, has been training rats to detect Mines and Tuberculosis since the 1990s. After one year of intensive training, the rodents graduate into “HeroRATS“. Some of these rats are ‘deployed’ in Tanzania to work on disease detection and others go to Cambodia to work for detecting landmines.
One of these “heroRATS”, a giant African Pouched rat, named Magawa, has been awarded the Gold Medal by the UK Veterinary Charity PDSA (People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, based in London) for his “life-saving devotion to duty, in the location and clearance of deadly landmines in Cambodia.” He has sniffed out 39 landmines and 28 unexploded munitions in his career.
For humans interested in the vital statistics of this winner, he is now all of 7 years old, 70 cm long and weighs 1.2 kg. He has reportedly sanitized an area of a tennis court in just 20 minutes, a job that would take a human with a metal detector between one and four days. Out of 30 animal recipients of the PDSA award, Magawa is reportedly the first rat.
Now fast approaching his retirement, he works only half an hour every. And according to the PDSA, Magawa’s work daily saves and changes Cambodian lives, reducing the risk of injury and death to adults and children in a country that has seen 64,000 casualties and 25,000 amputees due to landmines since 1979. An estimated 4 to 6 million landmines and other munitions were left scattered in the country after thirty years of wars and internal strife from the1960s to the 1990s. It is feared that most of these munitons are still undetected.
Not to be outdone, Canines are now coming out in Finland’s Helsinki-Vantaa airport checking incoming passengers for the Coronavirus.
Passengers wipe their necks with a cloth which is then placed in a can and kept before the dog. The result is known within a few minutes. After their training, 15 dogs and 10 handlers are covered in the initial part of the trial that started earlier this week.
As of now, passengers who consent for this test are instructed to also take a swab test to confirm the result.
According to Anna Heilm-Borjkman Of the University of Helsinki, they have reportedly reached a 100% sensitivity at detecting the virus up to 5 days before symptoms appear.
Airport authorities and the Police Canine Units involved with the university in this training are hoping that these dogs may soon be able to sniff test any passenger for the virus by simply walking around them, the way they detect the presence of drugs being smuggled into the country.
