The Hero Rats who save lives in Cambodia

You read that right. Rats who save lives. Let me back up a bit.

Cambodia has a tragic history of conflict in the 20th century. As a result, there are estimated to be between 4 million to 6 million unexploded landmines and unexploded missils in the country. Most of these are in rural areas where the expanding population is starting to farm and build. The result is a dangerous situation for all — especially children.

Landmines were placed in Cambodia from 1967 to 1998 — during the Cambodian civil war, the bloody reign of the Khmer Rouge (post on that coming up soon), and the ongoing warfare between the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese and Cambodia troops that lasted until 1998.

Some of the unexploded munitions that also endanger the Cambodian people were dropped by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War.

Land mines have killed or maimed over 64,000 people in Cambodia in the last thirty years and 50% of the victims are children, because often they think a landmine is toy and pick it up.

Land mine education is one mission of Catholic Relief Services and is teaching children how to look for and avoid landmines. Another organization helping the Cambodian people eradicate this danger is APOPO (from Dutch which stands for “Anti-Persoonsmijnen Ontmijnende Product Ontwikkeling”, or in English, Anti-Personnel Landmines Detection Product Development.

We visited the APOPO visitor center in Siem Reap and learned all about how they find land mines and unexploded munitions using African giant pouched rats. They’re not only smart and have an amazing capacity to smell TNT, they’re also adorable.

These amazing Hero Rats have a highly developed sense of smell. They have such great noses, they can be trained to smell TNT up to 1 meter UNDERGROUND! The rats are walked across land with suspected landmines on long leashes. When they smell TNT, they scratch at the ground and the handler marks the spot on his map. The found landmine can then be safely detonated. The rats are light enough that they don’t set off the landmines, and the handlers step only on land that is already known to be safe.

A Hero Rat can search and find landmines in an area the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes. Men searching the area with metal detectors would take up to 4 days — and would be very dangerous. And there’s even more that these amazing Hero Rats are being trained to do — they can detect tuberculosis in the spit samples of at-risk patients!

The Hero Rats of APOPO are my heroes, too. If you’re interested in donating to the work that is saving lives in Cambodia (or even adopt a Hero Rat yourself) you can do so here: APOPO Hero Rats.

Here’s a little video of the demonstration. The rats have a 100% accuracy rate for finding unexploded munitions and landmines. In other words, they never fail! Amazing.

What do you think of these Hero Rats and their jobs in Cambodia? Do you have questions about APOPO? Let me know in the comments!