When Bart Weetjens was nine years old he was given a hamster. It was the start of a lifelong passion for rodents. Soon he found a friend for his hamster and added mice and rats to his collection, breeding them to supply local pet shops.
Later, when he was living in Africa working as a development engineer, he applied his passion in an unlikely way.
It’s beautiful to see that people get out of poverty by a skill they have learned by themselves.
The non-profit organisation Apopo was born.
Using positive reinforcement behaviour that is respectful of the animals, African pouched rats are taught to identify the explosives, receiving treats for their efforts. After months of training, the rats are set a test and accredited as HeroRats if they pass.
The pouched rats are perfect for the job; intelligent with a keen sense of smell, they are small enough not to trigger mines and large enough to be easily identifiable in the field. No rat has been killed in a minefield.
The rats can clear two hundred square meters in just 20 minutes. It would take humans with metal detectors five days to cover the same area.
‘It’s an awful issue, the landmines. It affects everything in development,’ says Weetjens. ‘When you travel in landmine-affected countries you may notice that big areas, villages, agriculture ground, infrastructure is totally abandoned for decades and people are seeking refuge in refugee camps and informal settlements. Landmines pose structural barriers to any development.
‘It’s beautiful to see that people get out of poverty by a skill they have learned by themselves, utilising local resources, and to see the whole vicious circle of dependence being turned around to one of independence and self sustainability.’
After their success with landmines, the rats have also been trained to detect tuberculosis. Samples are presented to the rats and they hold their nose there for three seconds when they detect a positive result. Humans can then confirm the sample with a microscope. This method has increased detection rates by over 40 per cent.
‘Since 2008 more than 7,600 people—they were initially screened by a microscope and not found to have tuberculosis—but the rats picked it up,’ says Weetjens.
The rats live for up to eight years, but retire after six and live out their twilight years eating avocadoes, apples and bananas, and being regularly patted by their handlers.
You can also adopt a virtual HeroRAT to raise funds for Apopo. Mine’s called Dexter the Detector.
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