Published on November 12, 2024 at 9:37 p.m. / Modified on November 12, 2024 at 9:37 p.m.
• African giant rats have an exceptional sense of smell, capable of detecting buried mines and explosives.
• A Belgian NGO has made it a specialty and is exploring new applications, such as screening for tuberculosis or searching for people buried under rubble.
• This time it shows that these rodents perceive the odor of samples of animals or plants that are the subject of trafficking.
The rats of the family Cricetomys have great flair and a solid memory. So much so that they can detect and report all kinds of smells, provided they have been trained. At the end of the 1990s, a Belgian non-governmental organization, Apopo (Dutch acronym for Development of products to detect antipersonnel mines) undertook, in Tanzania, to train rats to detect traces of explosives in the air. These animals have a real advantage over humans: their “feather” weight (less than 2 kg) is not enough to trigger the explosion of antipersonnel mines hidden underground when they step on them. After an exploration with dogs to determine suspicious areas, rats intervene to systematically detect mines. They have thus made it possible to clean huge areas, notably in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola, Colombia, Azerbaijan and Cambodia.
At the same time, in 2008, Apopo demonstrated that its rats could detect tuberculosis in the mucus expectorated by patients, a tool now used in Tanzania, Mozambique and Ethiopia. “We use them in addition to traditional analyses,” explains Isabelle Szott, who trains and studies these rats at Apopo. This makes it possible to detect patients whose cell cultures have not been able to detect the disease.” Tens of thousands of people were thus able to be treated, while preventing them from transmitting tuberculosis in turn.
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