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Rescue Rats to Find Buried Victims
adaminnj writes "Rats are being trained to sniff out the buried victims of earthquakes and bomb blasts and could be sent to search for survivors in the same way as dogs. The idea of being rescued by a rat may not appeal to many people, but they have the advantage of being able to crawl almost anywhere and slip through small holes and crevices. Like dogs, they also have a highly acute sense of smell. But to be successful rescuers, they must be able to home in on victims and signal their position to waiting rescue teams."
talk about being ratted out
Why not resque teckels or resque chihuahuas?
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
And if the person is dead, eat them, thus saving costly search 'n' find excursion parties.
what about the things called ROBOTS - that are continuosly researched upon? ,tha ttoo in desert!]
Not to 4get the unmanned robot race competitions held in USA every year [ if i remember correctly
To me, the most interesting thing about this is how they "train rats to feel pleasure at the smell of humans", then monitor their brains for any pleasure stimulus.
But what happens when they come running to find that the rat has uncovered the world's largest cache of underground cheese?
Love the Third Amendment?
hope they don't train them with cheese.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
"Hurrah! A rat, something to eat and drink at last!
Dunno what this transmitter thing is, must have got trapped around the creature somewhere..."
Are these the robotic rats we heard of earlier?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
..trapped under 12 feet of concrete rubble, not being able to move, and a rat is gnawing at your face...
oh joy
The idea of being rescued by a rat may not appeal to many people
I bet it'd appeal more to most people than 'don't be rescued' though...
Rats can also be used to search for buried mines. You might want to read this interesting NYT article about it. It was featured on slashdot some months ago, IIRC.
Unfortunately, they haven't yet found a way from stopping the rats from chewing the faces off of the victims they find. I'm definitely waiting for the service pack.
Unless your name is Winston Smith shout out to George Orwell
This reminds me of an article that was pinned up in the copy room at Lucent in Allentown a while ago about rats that had been trained to run telecom and network cables through existing ductwork in schools. It was quite a few years ago so I forget the specifics, but it looked rather cool. Google has been unhelpful for the moment, but I'm still searching for more information.
PepperHacks - Hacking the Pepper Pad
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I'll never be alone
And you, my friend, will see
You've got a friend in me
(you've got a friend in me)
Ben, you're always running here and there
Finding dead bodies everywhere
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
Keep going and follow my distant calls
Under these broken walls
(under these broken walls)
I used to scream "HELP!!!" and "ME"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
I used to scream "HELP!!!" and "ME"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
Ben, most people would turn you away
I can't hear a word they say
They only see you as some trouble
Searching all this rubble
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben
(a friend) Like Ben
(like Ben) Like Ben
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Isn't that a new Saturday morning cartoon for kids?
Well at least you finaly got something to eat
Yeeaah, that's a good idea. Train rats to enjoy hunting down humans. This will end well, lol.
I imagine that if they're turning loose rats, they'll use some loudspeakers or something to attempt to warn people. And I'd put the rats in an orange vest or something, where it's obviously not a wild rat. Heck, maybe the rats will be equipped with 2 way radios, so the operator can talk to the victim.
But I'll take a little fear over being left to slowly die while trapped by a steel beam anyday.
BTW, the movie 'Willard' has probably done more to give rats a bad name image than anything other single modern thing.
Sounds like a good idea to me. With our ability to attach sensors to brains in a lab environment, I'm sure that a system can monitor for the reaction a rat has when it considers itself successful at a task. When the monitoring system detects a happy rat, they have an idea of where to search for trapped victims.
And as much as I like dogs, german shephards are a tad large for searching through rubble.
The trick, I assume, would be to train them to not eat you alive when they and their hoardes of friends find you.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
I've heard of stuff like this before.
I read of a project that was training weasels, or maybe ferrets, something in that family for the same type of thing. They're naturally curious, able to squeeze through unimaginable spots, etc.
The weasels were big enough to strap a little camera and transmitter to, and the idea was that they'd just go everywhere in the rubble.. Their natural curiosity would handle that part.
Them biting/eating victims (another natural instinct) was a problem. So the rescue critters would be "de-fanged", or rather have their teeth filed down when it was time to actually go to work. This of course, cripples the animal for the rest of it's life but the logic is "we sacrifice a couple of chinchillas to save one human life and it's worth it".
Of course, PETA and the like threw a fit. But even "animal lovers" look the other way when it comes to rats.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I first thought this was something else than what I've been reading about recently, and not just about using yet another trained animal.
/. blurb forgot to mention that what's so special is that the rats have electrodes implanted in their brains, which send a signal to the rescuers when the rat has found what it's looking for.
I thought wrong.
The
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
If you do a bomb atack also release 20 hungry cats in the area.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
This one is easy. Just program a microphone to pick up on the sounds of flesh being torn from the bones of the victims, and treat this as the "Found one!" signal. Hopefully you can triangulate the position of the victim before they are fully devoured.
There have been rats in training since a month after september 11th (the year where al-queda struck), maybe even before, and it was in the news back then too. A quick sweep over to google will reveal that.
... can this technique be used on women to train them to seek out the smell of all us unwashed geeks and nerds!
Smoking is an expensive, slow, and unreliable method of suicide.
This stuff has been news since at least 9/11, if not the 1993 bombing of the trade center. In fact, slashdot has had several articles about this. It's been on the news. It's been everywhere.... YEARS AGO.
*yawn*
Today, a robot wouldnt be able to detect a individual 1/2 dead person and seek them out.
Animals do this by 2nd nature.. And they are cheap...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Rescue rats will sniff out buried victims
JOHN INNES
RATS are being trained to sniff out the buried victims of earthquakes and bomb blasts and could be sent to search for survivors in the same way as dogs.
The idea of being rescued by a rat may not appeal to many people, but they have the advantage of being able to crawl almost anywhere and slip through small holes and crevices.
Like dogs, they also have a highly acute sense of smell.
But to be successful rescuers, they must be able to home in on their victims and signal their position to waiting rescue teams.
American scientists have been training rats to find human flesh irresistible.
They are also developing a radio backpack which will transmit signals from the rats' brains to alert search leaders on the surface.
A report on the project, funded by the Pentagon's research arm Darpa, appears in New Scientist magazine. Scientists first identified the nerve messages rats generate when they find a scent they are looking for.
John Chapin, a neuroscientist from the State University of New York, who is taking part in the research, said: "When a dog is sniffing a bomb, he makes a unique movement that the handler recognises. Instead of the rat making a conditioned response, we pick up the response immediately from the brain."
Each rat has electrodes implanted in three areas of the brain which process odour signals, plan movements and experience rewards.
The scientists stimulated the reward centre to generate feelings of pleasure when the rodent's nose picked up a whiff of human flesh. In this way, the rats were trained to seek out human odours.
They were then set to forage for a target meal while their brainwaves were monitored.
The "aha!" moment when a rat discovered the source of the smell was identified by a particular brainwave pattern.
As well as being able to track a rat's position from signals relayed by the radio transmitter, rescuers will also know when to start digging.
Software being developed by the scientists will recognise the "aha!" moment when the rat has found its target.
The team hopes to create a working rat rescue system within nine months.
I don't know about you, but the last thing i want to see after being buried under rubble from a collapsed building is a freakin' rat.
They better dress these disease caddies in orange jumpsuits and affix a shot of something to a barrel under their necks.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
And, like dogs, many people have white rats as pets..
They are smart, clean, and gentle..
Its the garden variety outdoor wild-rat that are the nasty ones that might just as well eat
a victim than save one....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Homer: A hamster ball!
Ned: Just like the one that saved Ezekiel!
You did it, Nibbles. Now, chew through my ball sack.
-- Principal Skinner, "Skinner's Sense of Snow"
Dr. Zoidberg?
Reason #1 : Weasels & ferrets aren't rodents at all, they're mustelids. Think skunks, otters, minks. They eat rodents, actually. And chincillas aren't even closely related to weasels, so I don't know why you're putting them all together. Reason #2 : Mustelids are all pretty particular about what they eat. (Except wolverines.) Humans are way too big. Besides, even with filed teeth, they'd probably still try to gnaw on something they thought was food.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
There's no case too big
No case too small
When you need help just call..
When you first notice shaking, if you happen to be in room 101, get the hell out!
I understand rescuers are really careful to prevent things from shifting while digging, but rats are much smaller than humans. I guess I just have this vision of the poor little guy squeezed into a tiny little tunnel right next to the victim he's found and some guy accidently stepping on him.
Not only would PETA be upset, but that's a waste of neuro implants!
And how do they make sure the rats seek out victims only and not rescuers?
having their teeth filed would hardly 'cripple them for the rest of their life' as rodent's teeth grow continuously throughout their lives, hence they need something to gnaw on if you keep one as a pet.
Slashdot links this article on cyborg rats used in search and rescue. I've been told that one big problem is giving a guarantee that the rats don't begin eating the people (dead or alive) they find. I suppose that the stimulation of pleasure centers of the brain would dominate other such carnal urges. All of this is desirable for a few reasons. The computer-rat brain interface research is also very applicable to computer-human brain interface. I just went to this very interesting talk on the subject. Further, very dexterous robots with high level perception are few and far between. A rat is amazingly mobile and also has an excellent perception suite. Of course, along the way, projects like this could save lives, and that is always wonderful.
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
... on those electrodes? This could be an interesting subject for an April 1st RFC ...
Just dye them bright orange, so people learn to recognize them, and won't fear them as much.
Personally I think its a fantastic idea. I've had a pet rat myself, and known a couple of other people who had them. They're smart as hell, easy to train and they're cheap. I've heard of aid workers in Africa training rats to find mines in mine fields. They're too small to set the mine off, but can sniff out the explosives like a dog. If you can train a mine sniffing rat, a human sniffing rat should be easy.
Using animals as workers is actually something I like the idea of. Like mixing llamas in with sheep. The llamas will adopt the sheep as it's flock and the sheep aren't afraid of the llama. But a llama can and will kick a coyote's ass if one comes sniffing around. (And literally kick the coyote's ass.) I do feel sorry for the people that have to volunteer to lie under rubble while they're training the rats though, but hey, its for a good cause. (How would you put that on your resume? Well yes, for 6 months last year I was employed as a trapped earthquake victim for rat training. No, seriously.)
If you like stories about animals sniffing things, they also have stories about giant rats sniffing out tuberculosis and dogs sniffing bladder cancer just to name two recent stories. I check out their news section first thing in the morning, then the nytimes, then slashdot.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
After working with them, we found them to be pretty intelligent and very clean. On top of that, they seem to be able to get into amazing places.
We had a pair of rats in particular that we kept as "pets" (the rest were used for breeding and were sold to pet stores). These two rats were large, white and housebroken (easier to do with a rat than a dog). They got along very well with our two cats and one dog. We used to sit, watching TV with them curled up on our laps.
All that being said, although I've never had to be rescued from a collapsed building, I have had to be rescued from a plane crash in the boonies before. Frankly, I wouldn't have cared if they sent a Kodiak Grizzly to find me, I just wanted to be rescued. However, having crashed in a grizzly area, I'd have to admit that it would have been emotionally distressing for me and potentially dangerous for the bear (I don't fly over those areas unarmed - for good reason).
So, (and I can only imagine here) being buried under a pile of rubble, I'm pretty sure I'd be worried about rats in the first place (keep in mind I like rats - but I also know them). This rat-rescuer had better be very well marked as such or it's history. For someone, like my mother, it would be traumatic to be rescued by a rat, but if she were burried, and the rat was marked as a "rescue-rat", even she might come around.
As far as being able to train a rat to do the deed, I have no doubt that it can be done. But there are going to be quite a few perceptual hurdles to overcome. For many, it'd be like training a snake to rescue people. They could get into even tighter spaces, but half your victims would die of fright before you could get them out and you'd be pulling out a badly beaten snake for the other half.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
Rats are able to squeeze through tiny holes and I am pretty sure they (the rats)realize this. So, what happens when a rat tries to squeeze through a hole and strips off the backpack, or gets the equipment caught on something and panics.
I have a feeling the technology isn't near usable yet. They didn't mention what method the equipment uses to transmit. Is the signal compact enough that it only needs to send a few bits or even just a tone on a certain frequency to the waiting receiver? I realize we're not trying to send tons of info, but my old 802.11a access point couldn't punch through a smoke filled room. How are they going to get a signal through rubble when there are bound to be chunks of metal everywhere. And the middle of a city is going to have its own sources of radio interference, and that's not taking the tons of electronic gadgets and transmitters that the emergency response and television networks have nearby.
So you could smell stuff as good as a dog, if you want to put it in your mouth.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
to detect duplicate articles?
"BTW, the movie 'Willard' has probably done more to give rats a bad name image than anything other single modern thing."
Yeah, because the Black Plague just wasn't enough. People have despised rats for millenia due to their connection with filth and disease; there is no "modern thing" responsible, especially not a movie that nobody saw from last year.
G
but how are they gonna teach the rats about tunneling protocols ?
MRE
___
http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL, USA
"Hurrah! A rat, something to eat and drink at last!
Ah, finally a chance for a Black Adder quote.
Black Adder:
What's on the menu?
Baldrick:
Rat. Saute or fricasse?
Black Adder:
Oh, the agony of choice. And sauteed involves?
Baldrick:
Well, you take the freshly shaved rat, and you marinate it in a puddle for awhile.
Black Adder:
Uh-hmm, for how long?
Baldrick:
'Til it's drowned. Then you stick it out under a hot light bulb, then you get within dashing distance of the latrine and you scoff it right down.
Black Adder:
So that's sauteing, and fricasse?
Baldrick:
Exactly the same, just a slightly bigger rat.
This is actually an old story.
The reason they're focusing on rats is for use in Muslim areas, especially of Africa, where dogs are considered unclean but large rats are common.
Just attach a pack of c4 to the rat's back. human found = send signal!
"So you could smell stuff as good as a dog, if you want to put it in your mouth."
Says a post from someone who's moniker is lawpoop.
The idea of being rescued by a rat may not appeal to many people
If I'm trapped under a collapsed building after an earthquake for a week, drinking my own urine and eating scraps of drywall, I don't care if it's RMS and Darl McBride who rescue me while debating the GPL.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
/Mighty Mouse
Which reminds me.
I want to rent Mouse Hunt again soon.
Prolly Walkens greatest comedic role as Caeser the Exterminator.
Who says the person has to be dead? Think of all of the savings on all of the old people and babies that can be safely ignored now that rats are being employed for this harrowing job!
And the next thing you know, someone will be trying to train Pirhanas for underwater rescue missions...
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
"having their teeth filed would hardly 'cripple them for the rest of their life' as rodent's teeth grow continuously throughout their lives, hence they need something to gnaw on if you keep one as a pet."
I recommend the mother-in-law.
I'm the Rescue Rat.
I will found out where he's at.
I'm sniffing.
Yes, not getting rescued would definitely suck. But I hope they put these little suckers in some little 'rat rescue' uniform, otherwise when the rat does find the person, that person it going to be scared shitless that not only are they buried but the rats have started to find them.
Heck, maybe a little rat loud-speaker saying "don't panic, this is a trained rescue rat" on a loop or someting.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yeah, well, you're moniker is anonymous coward.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Now Richard Gere will be going around trying to get trapped in falling buildings...
Oh, wait, that was rats, not gerbels.
Nevermind...
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
The rats themselves do not carry diseases (they are clean animals) - the fleas that live on them do - ala the Black Death in Europe during the middle ages.
Through extensive research I've discovered if you want to utilizie a gerbil in that manner you must first trim their nails and attach a somewhat thick piece of string to their hind leg. (not the tail as they may pull off).. Also a greased tube is to be employed...
"Hurrah! A rat, something to eat and drink at last! Dunno what this transmitter thing is, must have got trapped around the creature somewhere..."
They've been using rescue rats for years in the Swiss Alps. They tie miniature kegs to their necks so stranded people can stay warm one shot of booze at a time.
I'm going to start marketing cheese-scented clothes for guaranteed rescues.
You're thinking of The Rescuers, a 1977 Disney film. And they were mice, not rats. Close, though.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
This reminds me of an article that was pinned up in the copy room at Lucent in Allentown a while ago about rats that had been trained to run telecom and network cables through existing ductwork in schools.
In ancient Greece, Daedalus was said to have solved the problem of running a thread through a chambered nautilus by attaching it to an ant.
Those guys have experienced modernity long enough to forget that rats deserve their bad reputation in human history. A young girl I know just realized recently how bad the idea of owning a rat as a pet is. She had it as one of those quirky, wannabe-alternative drives and even made her roommate imitate her and get a rat too, in not too long her rat ate her roommate's rat, and as a result she got her roommate a bunny, but her rat, again, attacked the bunny and ate its eyelid and ears.
Rats are notoriously unreliable.
Rats are smart!
I had a girlfriend who had a rat she named "ED".
She would go to the park and let him run around, and Ed would come to her when she called.
Pretty darn cool.
they have the advantage of being able to crawl almost anywhere and slip through small holes and crevices.
I hear gerbils are good for this too. But, uhh, I wouldn't know.
The rescue rats are here! .... wait a minute... these aren't rescue rats..these aren't rescue rats!
can we turn off the red eyes in the dark if we're going to use these critters.
Oh wait, this isn't a cartoon.
Why not just put a cellphone on a lunar lander like thing and send it in and make the phone ring?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Oh no, there's a rat. Owwww! It's starting to eat my foot, and I'm trapped, and will be trapped for 3 more days! Owwww! Owwwwwwww!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
But to be successful rescuers, they must be able to home in on victims and signal their position to waiting rescue teams."
And, you know, not try to eat them before the rescue team gets there...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Much more successful than the experiment with rescue grizzlies.
Yeah, I saw that episode too. But Herc and Newt still showed up and kicked his ass.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Wrong rodents, but still, gotta hand it to Disney for preparing us for the world to come.
Isn't it that dogs can distinguish between dead people and the ones that are still alive? Does anybody know how they accomplish this feat? Hopefully the rats can do this as well.
from the to-stupid-for-words dept.
To me, the most important part of the story is that they trained the rats by stimulating their brain's pleasure centers. Are there any neurosurgeons who will implant an electrode into my brain's pleasure center? That must be the absolutely coolest way to go: dieing from happiness.
In related news, rescue rodents to join the effort. Unfortunately there's a risk of infecting found victims with rabies.
I've had a few pet rats over the years. One time, I put a rat under a funnel, with an opening just a little bigger than a nickel. The rat was able to squeeze out through that hole. (Kind of disturbing the way it's eyes bugged out as it did it, though)
I wonder how much their tracking equipment would limit their mobility through tight spaces? Well, regardless, being able to squeeze through a 2 inch space is almost as good as a 1 inch space.
Oh, and there's another danger besides rats gnawing on trapped victims. Even without teeth. One of my rats would stick it's nose into your ears if you set it on your shoulder, and once when I held it in front of my face, the damn thing grabbed onto my lip with it's paws and tried crawling down my throat. It got pretty far (I didn't want to bite it!) before I got hold of it's tail and yanked it out.
Rats may be smart as rodents go, but that's not saying much.
How hard can this be? the same sensore that detect pleasure get hairline threads of C4 braided next to them. when the final signal is sent, the C4 blows, causing minor but lethal brain damage.
granted, it's a bit of a betrayel to the rat, and it could prove to be buggy... but it's a start.
personally, I kinda hope we can find a better alternative... isn't there anything herbivorous that size?
'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.'
The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O'Brien was standing. Winston could not see what the thing was.
'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.'
He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask, with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres away from him, he could see that the cage was divided lengthways into two compartments, and that there was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.
'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.'
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
What, over a hundred comments and none about Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers? What's wrong with you people? I mean, sure the two title characters are chipmunks, but Monty was all mouse, and Gadget was so totally hot... Oops, did I say that out loud?
C'mon, you can sing it with me, you know the tune...
Some times some crimes
Go slippin' through the cracks
But these two gumshoes
Are pickin' up the slack
There's no case too big, no case too small
When you need help just call
Ch-ch-ch-Chip 'n Dale's [sic]
Rescue Rangers
Ch-ch-ch-Chip 'n Dale
When there's danger
Oh no, it never fails
Once they're involved
Somehow whatever's wrong gets solved
Ch-ch-ch-Chip 'n Dale
Rescue Rangers
Ch-ch-ch-Chip 'n Dale
When there's danger
Oh no, it never fails
They'll take the clues
And find the wheres and whys and whos
Ch-ch-ch-Chip 'n Dale
Rescue Rangers
Ch-ch-ch-Chip 'n Dale
When there's danger
Ch-ch-ch-Chip 'n Dale
they hear your screams as the rats chew away at your face while you're body is pinned underneath the rubble.
I'm disappointed in the Slashdot community. We're allegedly a population of brighter-than-average society members, many of whom have been ostracized in our lives for having thoughts, opinions, ideas, or interests that vary from the "norm." Yet nearly every poster to this thread falls right in line behind Average Person, believing that rats are filthy and evil and would love to eat our brains out. This belief comes from tall tales and mythology and hyperbolized crack house anecdotes.
Rats are intelligent mammals that got a very bad reputation for carrying the fleas the spread Bubonic Plague. Do you know who else carried those fleas? Humans. Now, rats are known for exploiting humans' wastefulness, thriving on the prolific volume of garbage we produce. Yet, if you spend 5 minutes with a well-treated domestic rat you will see that they clean and friendly and bear many of the same attributes as Man's Best Friend.
If you have had a negative first-hand experience with rats, then you're excused for deprecating them. Otherwise, try to keep your mind clear, open, and original.
but the rats kept saving their own kind first and then going back for the humans. Preservation of species I guess. Anybody got an extra Sig I can bum?
There are psychopaths in the canine world, too, who view humans as food, but they don't last very long in the rescue-dog program. I shouldn't think psycho rats would, either.
The likelihood of rescue rats chomping on the people they find is probably on the same order as rescue dogs eating survivors. First of all, for evolutionary reasons that probably fall under "TMI," rats are neophobes--they are reluctant to try new foods. A rat raised on pelleted rat chow simply won't recognize a human as food.
Also, while rats are predators and will eat other rodents, insects, and small animals, humans just don't fall into their range of prey animals.
And these rats are presumably going to be well fed, well trained, and bonded with humans--as strongly bonded as a dog might be. It would never occur to such a rat to chew on a live person. It would be like you deciding to chow down on a baby.
Now, chewing on dead humans is another matter--dead humans and animals smell different from live humans/animals, and to a rodent, the minute something's dead, it's meat. I don't think a rat used to pelleted food would be inclined to eat carrion, but it's a lot more likely than a rat chewing on a live human.
This doesn't negate any of the technical or public-relations problems involved, but the one that's kicking people's primal response--the fear of being chewed on by rodents in the dark--is probaby not realistic under most circumstances. At least, not with these rodents.
What you might expect is that the happy rat would express its joy by licking, grooming, or snuggling with a human, which could be disconcerting. As someone pointed out, rats do have an upsetting tendancy to stick their heads in people's ears and mouths, although they tend to do that only with beloved and trusted friends. (These are submissive behaviors; when they're doing it, they're treating you as a dominant rat.)
Hmmm--rattie blankets--half a dozen rats snuggled around a body could keep anyone warm. As people have said, might be hard to explain to a fear-crazed buried person what's going on, though.
Maybe the rats' transmitters should broadcast a message:"I am a rescue rat. I will not hurt you. Help is on the way."
--singingnettle
These wee beasties could equally well be used as formidable search-and-designate targeting drones...
As the mental picture of rescue rats flashed
...
through my mind, the vision of trained (and
muzzled) rats scouring through an earthquake
ravaged building searching for survivors made
some sense. After all, aren't rats at least
as smart as falcons, which have been used by
royalty to hunt for thousands of years?
Only the vision quickly turned to a muffled
terror (like being buried alive, but presumed
dead). Being pinned/trapped in a collapsed
building while being knawed alive sounds like
a modern tale straight from Edgar Allen Poe.
Excuse me while I go puke
Pirhana don't do the strip-the-flesh thing unless they're starving and provoked (which is how they got their reputation in the Western world: some Africans pulled a show to string Bwana Politician along, starving and confining pirhana for weeks, then driving a bleeding cow through them; nobody thought to question the show). There are also vegetarian pirhana which are very difficult to distinguish by eye from the omnivores.
The only real barrier to SAR pirhana is that they're too dumb. You'd basically need an aquatic mammal, and these (seals and dolphins) are being SAR-trained.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
this was a polite prvt msg.
wtf?
Pure genius! What will they think of next? Rescue vultures for people lost in deserts?
And if the person is dead, eat them, thus saving costly search 'n' find excursion parties.
Ah, and don't forget this:
But to be successful rescuers, they must be able to home in on victims and signal their position to waiting rescue teams.
How do you think the rats "signal" when they've found a new survivor? They can't bark like dogs do, after all.... My guess is that the searchers depend on the person found to make some kind of "signal", when they wake up to find a rat nibbling curiously on their earlobe.
...the rescue rats will carry casks of rum around their necks.
I know that many of us are waiting for the rescue cow, pig, lamb and fish. I personally can't wait for the rescue tofu cube.
Not that unusual, as I remember reading about giant Gambian pouched rats being used for
landmine detection
After all, if a rat is blown up, no one is going to cry a river (unlike a human EOD expert).
Go rats!