Alan_Poling_HeroRATs

I once asked a trainer “how is your rat doing?” and he replied in Swahili “great.” I then said, “very well, may I have a look at your data log?” The trainer gave it to me with a bit of a sheepish look, which was understandable when I noted that the rat had not worked in over a week. I pointed this out to the trainer and asked why the rat had not been used recently. “How is it then, that you’re rat is doing well?” I queried. The answer clearly showed the optimism and cheer of our staff: “She’s been sick but is doing better, and that’s great.” Enough said.

Our rats, like me, are better lovers than fighters ...

The HeroRATs weigh around 1.5kg, and this is not enough to set of the anti-personnel landmines they are searching for. Therefore we have never lost a rat to a landmine accident. Loss rates are actually a difficult question. A very small amount die from disease, occasionally they fight and cause injury, but mainly they recover from both and get back to work.

However we have been working in minefields now for over 7 years now, which is coming up to the maximum lifespan length of giant pouched rats in captivity. Therefore we are beginning lose the first round of HeroRATs simply to old age. Once they get to a point of self-imposed retirement, we leave them in their cages surrounded by their friends, occasionally exercising them, until they pass away. If they are in distress we humanely euthanize them

We’ve examined the possibility of using the rats to search for people trapped under collapsed structures, to find contraband tobacco, and to detect salmonella bacteria in feces and have provided proof of principle with respect to all of these applications.

The rats can find anything that emits volatile organic compounds – smells, to you and me – that they can detect. Other people have shown that dogs apparently can detect some human cancers and pouched rats can in all likelihood do so as well. In principle they should also be able to detect some environmental contaminants and leaking pipelines, so there are a lot of potential applications of the sniffer rat technology. Substantial research and development is required, however, to determine whether any given application is feasible.

Our HeroRATs don't work in hospitals themselves but rather we take sputum samples from local clinics and deliver them to our dedicated evaluation centre. Each rat takes around nine months on average to train and costs about $7,000.

We've been very fortunate to receive funding from many governments and institutions over the years. Support from the public is invaluable and really enables us to grow and achieve more. You can support us through our site and you can even adopt a HeroRAT. We even accept bitcoin!

https://www.apopo.org/en/adopt/order/subscribe/subscription

https://www.apopo.org/en/donate/order/start/app#k