NOS news•today, 2:15 p.m
They have already been used to find land mines, tuberculosis and victims of natural disasters, and hamster rats can now be used for other tasks: hunting ivory, horn and tropical wood. From new research Apparently rodents are good at that too.
The Gambia hamster rat is related to rats and mice, has plump hamster-like cheeks and is notable for its size. Some of the media talk about ‘rats as big as cats’. Dian van de Laak, who worked with the animals in Tanzania, puts it at about 30 centimeters, in addition to the tail. “At least bigger than a chihuahua.”
At the same time, the animals are small enough to move in narrow spaces, Van de Laak knows. “They can live for eight years, are relatively cheap to maintain and are highly intelligent,” she said. NOS radio 1 issue. They don’t see very well, but they smell better.
Hero status
Some of the rats have achieved true hero status, such as Magawa, who discovered dozens of mines and explosives in Cambodia and reward got for. The rats are ideal for this dangerous task: they are too light to set off explosives.
The hamster rats are trained for six months when they are young before they go to work. This takes place at a center in Morogoro in Tanzania. This is how the APOPO group, which was founded in Belgium, started about 25 years ago.
This video shows how rats are trained to identify contraband hidden in a metal barrel. As soon as the animal finds the illegal substances, it rings a bell:
Hamster rats in Tanzania forage for ivory, horns and tropical timber
Van de Laak was involved for years in the training, which works using rewards. “The rats hear a clicking sound and then get food. Because they are very intelligent, they understand this very quickly and then you can train them to go to certain places, for example until the -to stick one’s nose in something.”
In this way, the animals can be conditioned to respond to a specific smell. They can indicate this by crossing it with their nose or by pulling a bell with their front paws. They can also wear a vest with a camera on it.
The new research, in which Van de Laak was also involved, shows that rats can also successfully find smuggled wildlife at places such as airports and seaports.
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Gambian hamster rat looking for contraband in a container -
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Gambian hamster rat looking for contraband in a container -
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Rat is rewarded for his detective work -
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For special purposes, the hamster rats have a camera
Smugglers of ivory, rhino horn and other illegal products from poachers hide their wares in creative ways. “We trained the rats to, for example, identify pangolin scales hidden in coffee or detergent,” says Van de Laak.
At the end of the training, eight of the eleven rats selected were able to identify four commonly smuggled substances among 146 test samples.
Cheaper and faster
According to APOPO, the use of hamster rats as an odor detector is cheaper and faster than the screening methods currently used and has certain advantages over sniffer dogs. For example, rats can easily explore narrow spaces in shipping containers or be raised to inspect the ventilation systems of sealed ships.
Although the research is still at an early stage, the group hopes that it will be expanded. The team has now started operational testing at Dar es Salaam port and airport.
Sniffer rats are also used elsewhere, for example by the Dutch police. According to Van de Laak, there isn’t much that rodents can’t handle. “The possibilities are endless. New research can be started with anything that smells. At least if there is enough money for it, because an organization like APOPO is completely dependent on donors.”
2024-10-31 13:15:00
#Rat #discovers #natural #contraband #Possibilities #endless
