Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - September 27, 2004
Helen Nyambura

They may look like nothing more than ordinary laboratory rodents, but these rats are on a mission to root out Africa's land mines with the tips of their twitchy pink noses.

Scientists in Tanzania are training 250 of the African Giant Pouched rats to find buried explosives, hoping to develop a way of easing a land mine problem afflicting countries from Sudan and Somalia to Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

While the rats could help save lives and limbs in many countries, their trainers say that teaching the long-tailed rodents is a labor of love.

"It's work that needs patience and concentration. If you don't have that then you had better not even start the job," said trainer Maureen Jubitana, as Jerry was put through his paces at the center in the city of Morogoro.

Scuttling along a track littered with egg-shaped tea strainers containing TNT or distractions like coffee, cigarettes and spices, Jerry was rewarded with peanuts or a piece of banana each time he identified the explosives correctly.

The 5-month-old rodent is still some way from being considered an expert in the world of rodent mine identification.

He has reached the fourth stage of training but has to pass three more classes before he can take exams to be certified as a fully fledged land mine detector and join a small vanguard of qualified rats already in action.

Trainers have sent 22 rats to mine-infested Mozambique after putting them through the course, run by the Belgian demining organization APOPO and Tanzania's Sokoine University of Agriculture.

Using the same technique, the scientists are embarking on a new program to train the rats to identify tuberculosis (TB) in saliva samples from suspected sufferers.

COST EFFECTIVE

Part of the attraction of rats is the cost-effectiveness of the $850,000 a year project compared to other demining methods.

Many techniques need expensive technology that requires high levels of expertise. Rat trainers need only secondary school certificates and on-the-job experience.

And there's no shortage of rodents. Traditional hunters can easily catch rats which are used to breed laboratory animals for training.

While the idea of a room full of rodents might make some people recoil in horror, their trainers are rather fond of them.

"They are such hygienic animals," said Bart Weetjens, the project's managing director, pointing at a corner in the cage of Sandra, Machel and Mario that they had designated as a toilet.

When it comes to demining, rats can even trump dogs who have long been used for the task. Dogs have a much more complex brain which makes them more difficult to teach, meaning their training costs 10 times more.

Dogs reared in Europe were prone to tropical diseases, Weetjens said, while rats are far more hardy and had a higher success rate in finding concealed ordnance.

Almost half of a group of rats trained in Tanzania found all the mines during a certification test in Mozambique -- which the organization considers better than an average group of dogs.

Details of the number of mines buried in Africa are sketchy, but the United Nations estimates there are more than 110 million active mines in 68 countries, many of which are waiting on the continent for unsuspecting farmers or children playing in fields.

NOT FAIL SAFE

The rats are too light to run the risk of detonating land mines themselves, but they do have their limits. Although their success rates are high, Weetjens said they may not find all the dangerous items littering a suspected minefield.

"It is utopian to think that these rats are a splendid technique, a silver bullet that will resolve the whole problem," he said. "I would rather see it as a valuable alternative, especially for low income countries like in the African context."

Weetjens kept all manner of rodents as a boy but only learned of the rats' sense of smell from other researchers later in life, opening up other intriguing possibilities.

The center says the rats will soon be used to detect the presence of tuberculosis in the saliva of patients, and even smuggled drugs in coming years.

Detecting tuberculosis is particularly crucial in Africa, struggling to contain an AIDS epidemic in which about 70 percent of HIV positive patients develop the disease.

From a pilot study, the Tanzanian researches have shown that one rat can look for TB in 150 saliva specimens in 20 minutes, far faster than a laboratory technician peering into a microscope who can analyze only 20 samples in a whole day.

The Tanzanian authorities have said they might start using the technique if the project proves workable in the coming year, making the noses of rodents like Tom and Jerry even more useful.

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