Page 10
International
Rats to
the rescue
After decades of conflict,
Cambodia’s roads and fields
remain riddled with landmines.
Now, specially trained African rats
are being used to sniff out the
explosives for safe detonation.
BY A M Y HETHERINGTON
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
hey’re the unlikeliest of heroes,
working for peanuts (and bananas) to
make Cambodia a safer place. Meet
the African giant pouched rat, a TNT-
sniffing rodent that is helping clear
landmines across the southeast Asian
nation.
Decades of civil war and international
conflicts have left Cambodia with a legacy
that is a constant reminder of its bloody
past: 26 million bombs were dropped on the
country during the neighboring war in
Vietnam, and it has the world’s highest
proportion of mine amputees per capita as
a result. The Cambodian Mine Action
Centre estimates that between four and six
million mines and other unexploded
ordinance remain in the ground in
Cambodia.
With millions of live cluster munitions
and landmines still undetected, these furry
mine-detectors are on the frontline in the
fight to rid the country of its explosive
remnants of war and to give contaminated
farmland back to its people.
“They are a valuable tool to add to the
whole effort in clearing these awful legacy
landmines,” said Australian photographer
Miriam Deprez, who travelled to Cambodia
as part of her photography degree at
Australia’s Griffith University.
With a fierce sense of smell and a body
too light to detonate the landmines, the rats
are trained to sniff out the TNT in the
explosives. “They are so much more
effective than metal detectors,” Deprez
said. In an area that would normally take a
human with a metal detector four days to
clear, the Hero Rats (as they are
affectionately nicknamed) will only take 20
minutes, as they are not tricked by any
scrap metal or shrapnel lying in the ground.
They are also able to detect plastic-based
explosives.
Wearing mini-harnesses, and tethered to
a measuring tape and a line, the rats signal
to their handlers by giving the ground a
scratch when they sniff out explosives. A
demolition team then safely destroys the
mine.
“The team we worked with had about 14
rats and the same number of trainers, so
they do get to know their rats quite
intimately. They are able to really connect
with the rat,” Deprez said.
The rats go through a nine-month
training program, and are well looked after,
T
Above: As p a rt o f their training the rats are
given banana as a reward once a positive
indication has been made. Every rat has to
clear an area o f200 meters in less than 20
minutes, cannot miss any o f the mines and
can only give two false positive indications.
A t right: The Hero rats are leashed onto a
m easuring tape 10 meters apart in a box
form ation with one trainer on each side.
P H O T O S B Y M IR IA M DEPREZ
working only a few hours in the coolest part
of the day. “They are nocturnal and don’t
really like hot weather,” said Deprez. “They
do most of the work before midday, and the
handlers coat their rats’ ears in sunscreen
so they don’t get sunburned. Once their
work is done, they sleep for the rest of the
day.”
The rats are operating in the Srey Nouy
area of Siem Reap, where hazardous land
along roads and farmland has not been safe
to use for generations, the threat of these
remnants continually obstructing economic
and social development in the area.
It’s a program that has already seen
success in parts of Africa, where nonprofit
APOPO has been training the rats to detect
TNT, as well as tuberculosis in human
saliva, for more than 20 years.
“The rats helped Mozambique to become
completely mine free (in 2015),” said
Deprez. “So the hope is eventually for
Cambodia to have clear land.”
Learn more at miriamdeprez.com
Courtesy o f Street Roots’ sister paper, The
B ig Issue Australia / INSP.ngo.
Street Roots • May 25-31,2018