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Trained Rats for Mine Detection
rikomatic writes "The dangerous profession of anti-personnel mine detection is getting a surprising new tool: giant Gambian rats (NY Times reg). Some resourceful Belgians have figured out how to train these 30-inch rodents to hunt out landmines. They are cheaper and work harder than dogs and are more reliable than metal detectors. Plus, if one of them blows up, who's going to cry?"
Well, they can't be trained too well or they'd have enough sense to stay away from those land mines.
Rats don't have a union and get paid 1/10th the food dogs do...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Well I'm gonna guess PETA might care. They aren't happy about the military using dolphins.
reg free version
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
NY Times
The Age
Seattle Post
I'm sick of this anti-rodent bias in humans! "Plus, if one of them blows up, who's going to cry?" says the poster, and not a one of you will disagree with him, will you?
Fuckin' speciests, the lot of you!
On a more serious note, people will be upset about this, if only because it costs time and money to train any animal, even rats.
The previous sig has been removed due to
Why not use lawyers instead. They aren't as cute and no-one gets attached to them.
> Plus, if one of them blows up, who's going to cry?
My father was a giant Gambian rat, you insensitive clod!
John.
"Rodents of unusual size? They don't exist!" *rat attacks*
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Not as cool as my trained sharks with frickin laser beams....
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Plus, if one of them blows up, who's going to cry?
uhm.. the guy who paid x thousand dollars to have it trained?
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
"Rats don't have a union and get paid 1/10th the food dogs do..."
That's OK, just wait 'til those damn rats get outsourced to IT workers, who don't have a union and get paid 1/10th of the rats.
Plus, if one of them blows up, who's going to cry?
The rats' pan-dimensional, super-intelligent kindred will care, and I would not want to tangle with them.
And how long 'til we hear "Hey! Whose rat is this?"
"MINE!"
"Rodents Of Unusual Size? Frankly, I don't think they... " *boom*
from Dr. Fegg's Encyclopedia of All World Knowledge
::Note::
Dr. Fegg has only ever written one national anthem. Here it is, reproduced for the first time. Dr. Fegg would like to remind all his readers that he has not yet been paid for it.
-The Gambian National Anthem-
Gambia, Oh Gambia,
Though only small and thin,
When it comes to being called Gambia,
You are the one to win.
Your capital is Bathurst
A name that means so much
To you who live in Gambia,
Though less so to the Dutch.
Gambia, where men are men
And trees fit in the ground.
The one six-lettered nation
Where Gambians abound!
Gambians! O Gambians!
Though your country is so thin
And most of it a river
It's the place that you live in.
From mountains down to flat bits,
Ring out your anthem great,
Though now you're part of Senegal
The words are out of date.
-Bertram Wesley Fegg DD
WARNING: Humming of this anthem, even to oneself, renders the reader liable for royalty payments. These should be sent to Dr. Fegg personally and *not*, repeat *not* to the chisellers at the Gambian embassy.
Many people ask: What is Dr. Fegg a doctor *of*? Well, without going into specifics Dr. Fegg has tried his hand at many things in his time.
His is the sort of mind that can encompass deck chair repairing, sweeping, billposting and the buying and selling of cars with one previous owner. So it is perhaps unfair and irrelevant to confine his extraordinary talents to the mundane world of labels and categories.
Dr. Fegg *has* delivered babies, but only during the busy pre-Christmas period when the Post Office can't cope. And Dr. Fegg has done brain surgery-- though *never*, repeat *never* in the Bournemouth area.
I am sure countries with mine infestation problems will really care what animal rights organizations have to cry about. All I would have to do to gain some sympathy is put two-four 8 year olds with missing limbs because of land mines. That will shut up most people who want to complain about rats that breed like...well rats...
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Now if only we could just train humans not to plant the mines, *then* we'd be getting somewhere.
I went to the city because I wished to live without deliberation.
...so, Darl has finally been trained to do something useful?
that at the end of the article, it was going to mention how Mr. Cox has an uncle who died and left US 3.4M in a Tanzanian bank and with your help, it can be recovered?
You'll see that since they only weigh three pounds they don't trigger the mines.
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
In most of the slashdot penetrating world, we think of dogs primarily as companion animals, and find the thougt of them being blown to bits in mine clearance as "sad" (at least I certainly would)
I suspect from the point of view of the mine-clearing-canine group from Canada (they were recently spotlighted in a television program on National Geographic here) - it is the cost of training the animal that is the more serious loss, than the emotional suffering the handlers may suffer from the loss of a companion. For one project they had on the order of a half-dozen animals. So, losing one in an accident would be a pretty serious reduction in force.
Hopefully with rats, the cost of training, supporting, and getting them into the mine fields would be low enough that the mission would be less adversely impacted by losing one animal.
I am certain my friend who keeps pet rats would be just as horrified imagining a rat being killed ina clearing accident as I would be imagining a dog suffering the same fate.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
They should use womp rats.
They're not much bigger than two meters.
So what if a bunch of kids on Tatooine don't have live targets anymore? They should be using their T16s for more constructive things, anyway.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
better yet, make it into a Junkyard Wars episode. the team to detonate the most land mines by hurling giant rats with a catapult wins.
If the rats do get killed by the mines it'll give the troops a nice break from their MREs.
Any prisoner for life can apply - you just have to run through a field potentially filled with landmines. If you make it, you're free. If not, well, too bad.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
um have you heard of the concept of sterilization?
Or...
Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering? Pinky: I think so Brain, but I'd rather go hump a landmine.. Narf! {BOOM!!!}
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
Sarcasm aside:
Plus, if one of them blows up, who's going to cry?"
Is answered in the NYT article:
Rats are abundant, cheap and easily transported. At three pounds, they are too light to detonate mines accidentally.
So, now PETA can stop worrying. The rats are not in harms' way.
Yeah, lets leave these extremely dangerous explosives in the ground so we can mame samll children and adults. Killing for the sake of killing is wrong but don't call landmine detection frivolous. Anything that could saves lives, I just don't consider frivolous.
PETA. They'll be all over this.
We could use PETA members to sniff them out instead but I think the patchouli might interfere with the mine-detection.
Is there a People for the Ethical Treatment of PETA Members (PETPETAM) we need to worry about?
Jason.
Heh heh heh.
But clearly your friend wasn't a true PETA member, or he/she would have been violent toward you when you received your meal. This also would have kept you distracted while the ELF people lit your SUV on fire in the parking lot.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Doesn't PETA stand for People Eating Tasty Animals?
(just wondering)
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Too many non-native rocks are bad for the environment, you fool!
Besides, aren't rocks people, too?
I witnessed one swimming in an open-air sewer in Brazil. It took the firefighters over an hour to get it in a cage. It weighed over 150 pounds. In case you wondering they are called capivara, though the spelling varies.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Actually, when they start they aren't heavy enough. But each time they find a mine, they get food. So after a certain number of mines, the rats will be heavy enough and then: Rat-burgers!
Maybe I'm seeing things, but did you just try to back up your argument with anecdotal evidence from The Simpsons? And then you got modded up as "Insightful"?!
Sir, you are clearly a better Slashdotter than I.
(P.S. - I'd imagine the rats would be sterilized.)
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Let's see:
this article suggests that there are 868,000 acres of farmland in Egypt alone!
How many rocks does it take to clear a single acre?
I'll leave the math as an exercise.
I saw a docu on national TV on this.
They were training the rats. They had to stop at dishes with TNT traces.
The trainers gradually reduced the amount of TNT. It was reduced so far that it was undetectable, yet the rats still stopped.
The bastards no longer reacted on the TNT, but at the smell of the guy who filled the dishes every day. They had to be retrained, wasting a few months.
But, hey, you can't blame them taking the easy road.
Why don't they use lawyers and politicians? There'd be a lot less liklihood of protesters...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The seals had little to nothing to do ith your dwindling cod population. Overfishing had everything to do with it. Now kill the damn seals, take their pelts and eat them -- I have no problem with that. But making a scapegoat of something -- lying to others and yourselves, not listening to the obvious truth and blaming your sins on Elvis, space-beings, Canada, rock-music or seals? Now that's abhorrent.
Aww, I think they're cute. Any chance of training Darl instead?
...and say we did, and send him out there anyway.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This is not so really new.
The Russians trained dogs to feed under tanks. They starved them for days, then let them free with their food to be found under tanks.
When the Germans came, the dogs were loaded up with anti-tank devices, triggered by a lever on their backs. After a few days of no food, the Russians let them free in the German occupied terrority. Of course, the dogs ran straight to the German tanks looking for, and expecting food **BANG**
After a few weeks of this, the Germans were so shit scared of this 'terrorist' activity, they used to shoot any dog on sight, taking no chances, so slowly the Russians use for the dogs faded.
Then the Russian boffins discovered that mice used to nest in the tanks (nice and warm) and used to strip electrical cabling to make their nests - very shortly rendering the tank useless until repaired (very difficult). They bred and released thousands of mice to attack the German tanks in this way.
The Germans fed-up of of this type of terror attack, struck back by dropped cats from aircraft to combat the mice attack, and that worked very well...
then the Russians had a brain wave, and brought out the 'retired' tank dogs to get the cats.
The full circle!
Amazing, but true.
Nick
"Plus, if one of them blows up, who's going to cry?"
I was raised by giant Gambian rats, you insensitive... oh nevermind. I'm calling Peta, the People for the Eating of Tasty Animals.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
But they got too many false positives. Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
I could use some trained mines for rat detection in my apartment.
Rest assured that that connection would cease to be there if it doesn't find the mine carefully enough. At that point it would fail the sentient test and become merely "sent'.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes quite often. -- Mark Twain
Perhaps another good idea would be to STOP USING FUCKING LANDMINES
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I have always hated mine sweeper. I say let the rats have it. They must be better than me at guessing what all those numbers over the squares mean!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
In fact, Apopo uses rats, in part, because they are lightweight and very unlikely to set off landmines. (Otherwise native wildlife would routinely set off mines.) It would not be a very effective solution if they spent 1/3 of the animal's life training it and then sent it out to be killed the first time it found a mine. The rats that they train have a natural life expectancy of around 8 years - and the handlers want them to live as long as possible to maximize the time and effort. There is even an alternative method they are investigating which involves filters - the rats don't even go near the suspected areas. I can't see much that PETA could complain about here.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
To be sure of getting all of them you have to either detect them reliably (often no metal parts, which makes it a million times more difficult) or disturb all the soil, damaging crops, trees etc. Footpaths may be mined, they may run through trees, across hillsides, and so on, where it is impracticable to use a bulldozer.
In the case of the bigger mines, you could in theory build a very robust machine, and be willing to repair it quite often. It could run up and down all day automatically, using GPS. It would be much less stressful to its operators, I have heard that operating an armoured bulldozer leads to lots of nervous breakdowns because of the frequent random explosions. I think that might have been on TV some time after Mrs. Thatcher's Falklands war.
If people do have new ideas about this, they should perhaps communicate them to the proper authorities, it really does seem to still be a major problem.
We still occasionally find one of Hitler's bombs in the UK, I know it is a slightly different scenario, but they usually do appear to be still dangerous after 60 years. There was an evacuation somewhere a few weeks ago while the thing was made safe.
I also saw something else on TV a few years ago, again probably in Kuwait, which seemed to detonate an entire minefileld at once. IIRC it was a British invention, likely the US will have it also. Can't remember how it worked, whether it was EMP, or sonic, or what. All I remember is seeing a vast set of almost simultaneous explosions. I think it might not have been totally reliable, IIRC it missed a few.
I think that maybe you asked the question because it does not seem to be done, and I suspect that the answer mainly involves money rather than impossible technology.
*Mild spoiler warning!* ... Which you had to use to clear the minefield in front of the Vulture's hideout. Cute, yellow, mechanical bunnies handled by a grizzly biker. LucasArts was ahead of its time on that one!