Socchan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
soc_puppet) wrote2025-07-03 11:40 am
soc_puppet) wrote2025-07-03 11:40 am
Entry tags:
Speech: Humanitarian Rats
I may as well share this here.
Humanitarian Rats
What do rats, landmines, and tuberculosis (also known as “TB”) have in common? Around the world, they’re considered a danger to humans. But there’s currently an organization dedicated to turning one of these scourges against the other two: Apopo, whose members train Gambian pouched rats to detect landmines and TB so these threats can be safely neutralized. I was a pet rat owner myself when I first learned of this organization’s existence; today, I’m going to tell you about their work.
As reported by The Guardian, Apopo’s rats are all trained using positive reinforcement, in a method commonly called “clicker training”. First, the rats are given a bite of a banana while a device is used to make a clicking noise. Soon, the rats begin to associate the clicking noise with tasty treats. The rats are then given samples to sniff; when a rat correctly identifies the smell of explosives or TB, the trainers sound the clicker, stimulating reward signals in the rat’s brain. The rats are later rewarded with actual bananas to reinforce the training. Using this method, rats are able to safely and accurately detect munitions and disease.
But what makes landmines and TB so dangerous, and how are rats particularly suited to help? Human Rights Watch explains that: “Antipersonnel landmines are weapons that cannot discriminate between a civilian and a combatant”. While the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty forbids signatory countries from their use, many were left armed and undetonated in what is otherwise usable land. UN News reports that in 2021 alone, more than two decades after the Mine Ban Treaty, over 5,500 people were maimed or killed by landmines. Since Apopo’s rats are trained to smell the explosive chemicals, they can locate ordinances that are left undetected by more conventional means, such as metal detectors; and with their small size, rats don’t set the explosives off, making them safe to remove or manually detonate.
Unlike landmines, however, TB does something especially sinister: It travels. According to the World Health Organization, “Worldwide, TB has probably returned to being the world’s leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, following three years in which it was replaced by [COVID-19]”. Its symptoms include a prolonged cough (sometimes with blood), chest pain, fatigue, fever, and night sweats. Apopo goes on to report that, unless treated, each positive case of TB can result in a further fifteen infections. A properly trained rat can test a hundred samples in just twenty minutes, dozens of times faster than a laboratory, and can find infections that standard tests miss.
Between these projects, Apopo’s staff and rats have prevented more than a three hundred thousand TB infections, and returned over a hundred thousand square kilometers of land to local communities. What’s more, the organization is continually seeking out new ways for their trained rodents to be of service, such as locating missing persons in disaster zones and tracking poached pangolins. While invasive and pest rats can indeed be a massive problem to both humans directly and the ecosystem we share, some rats at least have proven that they can be heroes.
----
Works Cited
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/21/saving-the-pangolin-giant-rats-trained-to-sniff-out-worlds-most-trafficked-mammal (basics of rat training, info on the possible expansion to pangolin detection)
https://www.hrw.org/topic/arms/landmines (landmine description and statistics)
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis – (TB symptoms and comparison to Covid 19)
https://apopo.org/ (everything else)
I prettied these up for the actual assignment, but couldn't find a singular listed author for any of them. Which sucks, because that's supposed to be part of the citation. That said, I wasn't prepared to go digging for other sources, either; all of everything else had been more than enough for me this week! So I guess I'll just take point deductions on that, if there are any. (I included a note asking for the teacher's advice in such situations going forward, which will hopefully help.)
Humanitarian Rats
What do rats, landmines, and tuberculosis (also known as “TB”) have in common? Around the world, they’re considered a danger to humans. But there’s currently an organization dedicated to turning one of these scourges against the other two: Apopo, whose members train Gambian pouched rats to detect landmines and TB so these threats can be safely neutralized. I was a pet rat owner myself when I first learned of this organization’s existence; today, I’m going to tell you about their work.
As reported by The Guardian, Apopo’s rats are all trained using positive reinforcement, in a method commonly called “clicker training”. First, the rats are given a bite of a banana while a device is used to make a clicking noise. Soon, the rats begin to associate the clicking noise with tasty treats. The rats are then given samples to sniff; when a rat correctly identifies the smell of explosives or TB, the trainers sound the clicker, stimulating reward signals in the rat’s brain. The rats are later rewarded with actual bananas to reinforce the training. Using this method, rats are able to safely and accurately detect munitions and disease.
But what makes landmines and TB so dangerous, and how are rats particularly suited to help? Human Rights Watch explains that: “Antipersonnel landmines are weapons that cannot discriminate between a civilian and a combatant”. While the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty forbids signatory countries from their use, many were left armed and undetonated in what is otherwise usable land. UN News reports that in 2021 alone, more than two decades after the Mine Ban Treaty, over 5,500 people were maimed or killed by landmines. Since Apopo’s rats are trained to smell the explosive chemicals, they can locate ordinances that are left undetected by more conventional means, such as metal detectors; and with their small size, rats don’t set the explosives off, making them safe to remove or manually detonate.
Unlike landmines, however, TB does something especially sinister: It travels. According to the World Health Organization, “Worldwide, TB has probably returned to being the world’s leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, following three years in which it was replaced by [COVID-19]”. Its symptoms include a prolonged cough (sometimes with blood), chest pain, fatigue, fever, and night sweats. Apopo goes on to report that, unless treated, each positive case of TB can result in a further fifteen infections. A properly trained rat can test a hundred samples in just twenty minutes, dozens of times faster than a laboratory, and can find infections that standard tests miss.
Between these projects, Apopo’s staff and rats have prevented more than a three hundred thousand TB infections, and returned over a hundred thousand square kilometers of land to local communities. What’s more, the organization is continually seeking out new ways for their trained rodents to be of service, such as locating missing persons in disaster zones and tracking poached pangolins. While invasive and pest rats can indeed be a massive problem to both humans directly and the ecosystem we share, some rats at least have proven that they can be heroes.
----
Works Cited
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/21/saving-the-pangolin-giant-rats-trained-to-sniff-out-worlds-most-trafficked-mammal (basics of rat training, info on the possible expansion to pangolin detection)
https://www.hrw.org/topic/arms/landmines (landmine description and statistics)
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis – (TB symptoms and comparison to Covid 19)
https://apopo.org/ (everything else)
I prettied these up for the actual assignment, but couldn't find a singular listed author for any of them. Which sucks, because that's supposed to be part of the citation. That said, I wasn't prepared to go digging for other sources, either; all of everything else had been more than enough for me this week! So I guess I'll just take point deductions on that, if there are any. (I included a note asking for the teacher's advice in such situations going forward, which will hopefully help.)