APOPO
APOPO is a non-profit organisation with headquarters in Tanzania, but their work has extended to impoverished nations across the world. This organisation uses Southern African giant pouched rats, affectionately known as ‘HeroRats’, for scent detection of landmines and tuberculosis. Rats have exceptional olfactory capabilities, and utilising them in this way, to address some of the world’s most considerable humanitarian issues, was proposed by Bart Weetjens a former engineer.
Training
APOPO uses operant conditioning (originally proposed by Skinner, 1938) to train the rats with a clicker and immediate presentation of a food reward as a conditioned reinforcer. There is ample evidence that the use of positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement or positive punishment confers benefits for animal welfare. The HeroRats are also habituated to humans from around four weeks of age, when their eyes first open, so they can become acclimated to human contact, sounds and smells. The rats are trained for around 30 minutes per day to avoid exhaustion, and the training process follows a number of stages, of which the final stage is accreditation with assistance from the National Mine Action Authority (NMAA).
The impact
APOPO has successfully destroyed 160,366 landmines, which allowed 241,697,019 square metres of land to be returned to local communities. When fertile land is released to local people, they can use it for agriculture, supporting their socio-economic development. Furthermore, landmines are often positioned close to schools, subsequently allowing children to access schooling following land clearance. Since the HeroRats began their contribution to tuberculosis detection in 2007, nearly 1 million sputum samples have been screened leading to an average increase in clinic detection rate of 14%.
Do the rats die?
Eventually, as we all will, the rats do die. However, they are not at risk of setting the landmines off due to their light weight, and the sputum samples are not contagious as they are heat treated in an autoclave. Once the rats show signs of being unable or unwilling to work, they will be awarded a happy retirement.
How can you help?
For a small contribution a month you can adopt a HeroRAT or HeroDOG and help APOPO save lives. APOPO’s mission is to allow people all over the world to live, work, and play without fear of landmines or disease.
For more information
All of the information and images in this post have been adapted from the APOPO website. For more info see below: