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Israeli Company Trains Security Mice
Israeli scientists have created an explosive detector using specially trained mice. Researchers claim the mice are more accurate than dogs or x-ray machines and best of all, they work for peanuts. From the article: "The device was tested last year on 1,000 shoppers in a Tel Aviv shopping mall when the mice successfully picked out 22 people carrying mock explosives."
Will these mice be members of Moussad?
Don't mice cause terror in a(n exaggeratedly) large segment of the population? I wonder how long it will take for the screams and panic to start once the mice run up to them.
Of course, this implies that mice are weapons of terror.
When the mice sense traces of drugs they run to a side chamber where the trigger an alarm, the magazine said.
Except, I don't think they get food as that would very likely introduce a conflict of interests ;)
Explosion detection is pretty cool, and useful I'm sure. But I was hoping for special ops commandos.
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Not to be confused with Col.
This will only encourage those who blame Mossad for shark attacks and who detained a vulture for working for Mossad. perhaps they will be detaining mice now.
Against defending against Egyptians?
Just to be clear, I hope there is no war. Egypt needs to get their stuff together and settle down.
Thank goodness they're not a nuclear weapons holding country.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
This is similar to work that's been done with rodents being used to detect landmines. The animals themselves are light enough that they can stand on the mines without detonating them, and use their sense of smell to locate and alert the handler as to the location of the ordinance. Move over sniffer dogs, here come Africa’s rats
With a live mouse down your pants, you'll confess to anything!
The mice may work for penuts, but training them can't be free, and then assuming the mice can be trained in 3-4 months then you still have to deal with an average lifespan of only 2 years.
They found all 22 out of 1000 but the article doesn't tell us how many they declined to tell us how many false positives they got. Which, in my book, makes this story useless for science but serve a use as a PR use. "Those crazy zionists have mice that can detect bombs!"
Also the story doesn't mention anything about the process or methods. Are the mice running free? Trapped in a box? Is the mouse live or dead? Is it live or dead in a box? Does it use smell or does it turn colors?
Sure some of that is joking but this article really doesn't say much and leaves a lot to speculation.
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Because finding mock explosives is a lot harder than finding the real thing. Usually what they do is take a material and rub it up against a small amount of explosive, like say a little bit of black powder or rub it against a bit of TNT to get the chemicals on it. So, the material itself isn't going to explode no matter how careless you are with it, but there's still chemicals from the explosive on it for the mice to identify.
This reminds me of the recent story of executing a vulture for suspicious activity (hanging around the desert) and claiming it was an Israeli spy in training. Now with news that real mice are being trained for detecting explosives, I have to wonder how much mass hysteria we will see in the Middle East.....
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animals anyway.
I doubt the public would be any more alarmed at the thought of having a cute small trained rat go through their clothes and luggage or some ugly full-sized trained troglodyte pawing at them.
You put a little blue and gold uniform on 'em, add a little cap, and you'll have people lining up(, and enjoying it.)
Its called Disneyfication.
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