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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
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.
Screw PETA, kids avoid getting blown up while playing soccer etc beacuse of stuff like this.
"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.
"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.
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?
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.
The solution is obvious... use PETA members instead of the rats. I like rats.
Too bad PETA threw away all its credibility on stupid, bullshit issues.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Why the hell are kids playing soccer in the ocean surrounded by mines?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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
In order to survive on this world we must eat living creatures - be they plant or animal. For a balanced diet we must have animal flesh; plant food just doesn't hack it alone. To get animal flesh we must kill the animal. Similarly, these same creatures can serve us in other useful ways (seeing eye dogs, carrier pigeons, and Gambian rat mine detectors) that is certainly more 'humane' than being food.
Given the above, as long as these giant Gambian rats are treated well until their eventual explosive demise (which is a quicker cleaner death than some of the destruction and death caused to humans by PETA fanatics), I don't have a problem with it.
What I get angry about is people who don't treat their animals well: they don't feed them, care for them, or provide an environment that is enriching for the animal during its life. The wanton destruction through neglect is really the problem - not animals used in testing, or Gambian rat mine detectors. What is worse is when people decide they have to abandon an animal 'in the wild'.
I can't count how many dogs and cats have been dropped off at the rural crossroads near my house. If you aren't going to be able to take care of an animal, why have it in the first place? We end up having to kill them anyway when they become a nuisance (hungry, scared and lost, they put pressure on the local ecology and farms - and become dangerous to young children). It would be more humane for these people just to take these animals into their back yards and shoot them in the head in the first place.
This lack of responsibility is immature and disturbing; adults who in many cases hold responsible positions in society - yet stoop so low. Worse is the poor example they show their children - who themselves become poor stewards.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Are you saying PETA destroyed any credibility with "holocaust on your plate"? That's where PETA compared bacon to millions of dead Jews, Roma (Gypsies), the handicapped, Slavs (Poles, Russians, and others), Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals. If so, you're crazy. It's obviously the same thing, as any Hannibal Lector will tell you.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Hey I think you just invented the next x-game.
In order to survive on this world we must eat living creatures - be they plant or animal. For a balanced diet we must have animal flesh; plant food just doesn't hack it alone. To get animal flesh we must kill the animal.
Actually, this isn't true. It's perfectly possible to have a balanced diet with all the human nutritional requirement simply by eating plants. The problem is that it's not easy: you have to know which foods have what nutrients, and be sure to eat enough of them. Protein is a big problem too; there are non-animal foods with a lot of protein (like nuts), but just eating salads isn't going to be enough. That's why there's so many college kids that have nutritional problems. They decide to become vegetarians because it's "cool" or whatever, but they don't actually do their homework and learn how to do it properly, so they end up with insufficient protein, low iron, etc. Eating meat makes it much easier to have a balanced diet.
For the record, I'm a happy carnivore.
Now, if you were talking about cats, you'd be correct: cats require certain amino acids that can only be found in meat. Dogs and humans are omnivorous, and can survive without meat if necessary, but not cats.
Yes. But I've never heard of dolphins being trained to find them.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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.
Actually, thinking about it you do make a point. I agree that there should be an ethical differentiation of sentient species and non-sentient species.
However, I think you are wrong in saying that any number of animals should be risked to save a single human. The key point being: how do you decidee when a species is sentient or not? You really can't, can you? To some degree, maybe. Apes, for instance, should be considered sentient. And what about robots? (OK, that part of the discussion is probably best left out for a few more years :)
It seems that you just think that only humans are sentient, which I certainly don't agree with.
Whether dolphins are cute, or rats not, is a matter of opinion. I think it's typically a matter of uninformed opinion, but that's just my opinion. :-)
I personally think rats are cute. I have a exceptionally cute rat sitting on me licking my hand as I'm typing this, so I'd argue that I have some idea of what I'm talking about. They're also intelligent, clean (yes, clean), and they make excellent, and increasingly popular, pets. I have eight myself (not as excessive a number as it might sound - they're social creatures who like company, and looking after multiple rats isn't hugely different from looking after one).
Most people when they've met rats I've had have tended to find them cute, despite some of their initial preconceptions. That's just my experience of course, and if you think rats aren't cute, fine, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. But I do find it somewhat depressing that the majority of people (and I'm not saying you're one of them) who express that opinion know pretty much nothing about rats. Just shows how easily people in general accept the opinions foisted on them by the society in which they develop I suppose.
Anyway, I'd also argue that whether they're cute or not is irrelevant to this topic, or it should be anyway. 'Animal rights' shouldn't be based on the cuteness of the animal in question, it should be based on the actual facts of the situation in question, and cuteness doesn't really enter into that. In this case, the rats are rewarded for the work, and there's little risk - as the article says, they're too light to set off the mines. So while I care - and as I expect anyone else who is concerned with 'animal rights' and isn't irrationally prejudiced against rats cares - I don't have a problem with using rats for this purpose, so long as they're treated humanely otherwise.
"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
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)