“Mice and Rats: More Than Just Pests – Their Incredible Abilities”

JAKARTA – Mice are disease-carrying animals and are considered pests by the community. But that’s not the case according to wildlife care specialist Cari Inserra.

Reported by CBC News, mice are smart animals and can do many great jobs. Mice can detect mines, sniff out smuggling operations and smell disease.

Matt Galloway of the San Diego Zoo said he received a shipment of rats from Apopo, a Belgian non-profit group working in Tanzania, to train giant African rats.

“Rats can detect mines, sniff out smuggling operations and even smell disease,” he said, quoted from CBC News, Thursday (27/4/2023).

As a result, the smell of mice is completely reliable and 100 percent accurate. “He’s never wrong, when he’s looking for his target scent,” he explained.

The rat’s most impressive achievement is being able to detect landmines. Apopo owns rats and is handling them in a number of countries, including Vietnam, Angola and Mozambique.

“Rats can traverse fields and alert humans when they sniff out TNT landmines,” he said.

Unfortunately, society’s stigma against rats is already bad. A 2016 study from the University of British Columbia even stated that an increase in the rat population endangers human health, because rats often carry diseases.

(san)