Experts are training rats to sniff out buried land mines, poached remains of animals and tuberculosis in human beings

Since 2000, they've bred hundreds of trained and accredited rats that have so far found 1,500 buried land mines across an area of 240,000 metres squared in Tanzania, and 6,693 land mines, 26,934 small arms and ammunitions, and 1,087 bombs across 9,898,690 metres squared in Mozambique. They’re also operating in Thailand, Angola, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. And don’t panic - they’re too light to be setting off any buried explosives.

> A spin-off project that trains tuberculosis-detecting rats has so far produced 54 accredited rats for use in 19 TB clinics in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam. Since 2002, they’ve screened 226,931 samples and identified 5,594 TB patients.

Source: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/giant-african-rats-detect-land-mines-and-tb-for-a-living/

More about the rats and their training: https://www.apopo.org/en/herorats/animal-welfare

Sources: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-18/african-giant-pouched-rats-trained-to-sniff-illegal-trophies/8039354

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/little-convincing-rats-can-detect-tuberculosis?tgt=nr

TB study source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29617007

Photo source: https://www.apopo.org