(Image source from: Rats Trained To Hunt Out Land Mines})

Pol Pot, the notorious leader of the Khmer Rouge, used land mines as his "Perfect soldiers." The Cambodian countryside is littered with millions of these explosives and more than 63,000 people have been killed or badly injured in mine-related accidents.

To end this menace, APOPO, a Belgian NGO, has begun training African giant pouched rats, which is a common species in sub-Saharan Africa to help detect deadly land mines buried in different areas of Cambodia. The project has been highly successful in war-torn regions of Africa and the animals have helped to clear more than 13,000 mines in Mozambique.

Bart Weetjens, the founder of APOPO, began breeding the rats in 1997 and found that they could detect the scent of the TNT used in the mines. The small animals scuttle across the ground without setting off any of the mines and need only 20 minutes to cover an area that would take five days for humans with metal detectors to investigate.

By Premji