Giant African rats or HeroRats are being used to find left over land mines that are left from Mozambique's civil war. The war ended in 1992 and there are still millions of land mines scattered around Africa. Between 1999 and 2009 land mines caused 73,576 casualties around the world. A separate campaign done in 2007 estimated there were 5,426 casualties that year from land mines; a fifth of them were in Africa. After being a long time rodent lover, Bart Weetjens decided to train giant rats to help find some of the millions of mines still haunting parts of Africa. Giant rates are native to Africa so they are immune to tropical diseases that imported dogs can catch. They are small enough to go near mines without setting them off. More giant rats can be held in one area making it easier to train and house the animal. Their small size also makes it easier to transport them to the vet for their weekly checkups. Now that Weetjen has made some of the bad reputation of rats disappear people are accepting the animals more and more. Weetjen's company Anti-Personnel Land Mines Detection Product Development is currently working towards using these giant rats to find gas leaks, narcotics, tainted food and people trapped in rubble.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/09/07/herorats.detect.landmines/index.html?npt=NP1
Posted by Christine Steinbeiss
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment