Dutch Police Recruit Rats To Sniff Out Crime

An anonymous reader writes "Ratting someone out' just became much more literal. Dutch police are using trained rats to help keep the streets clean. 'Detective Derrick and his rat partners cost just £8 each and are capable of being trained to identify an impressive range of odors—including drugs and explosives—within ten to 15 days. In contrast, a police dog costs thousands of pounds and requires a minimum training period of eight months. The training procedure is straightforward: the rats are kept in a cage with four metal tea strainers attached inside, one of which contains gunpowder. When the rat recognizes the smell, it is rewarded with a "click" and a small treat. Eventually the rat will learn to move towards the smell instantly. In a demonstration it takes Derrick just two seconds to locate the offending odor."

Comments

What next the criminals recruit lots of cats?

[mrspoonsi]

I can see an animal arms race there.

Re:What next the criminals recruit lots of cats?

[Cryacin]

I trump you with my miniature giant space hamster.

Re:What next the criminals recruit lots of cats?

[Errol backfiring]

That is why the rats are kept in cages. But I wonder what happens if you apply a strong odour (for rats) to your site. Could mint oil be sufficient to render the rats useless?

Re:What next the criminals recruit lots of cats?

[TheP4st]

Likely that would be about as effective with rats as it is with dogs, i.e. not at all. What might work is to use urine from an animal that prey on rats, ferrets in particular come to mind as they are extraordinarily efficient on hunting rodents and therefore it would make sense that rats have an instinctive fear of them.

Re:What next the criminals recruit lots of cats?

[Darinbob]

Careful now. Miniature giant space hamsters tend to go for the eyes, and that leads to police brutality lawsuits.

Re:What next the criminals recruit lots of cats?

[ShanghaiBill]

What might work is to use urine from an animal that prey on rats

Many rodents have an innate fear of the smell of cats. So cat urine should work well unless the critter is infected with toxoplasmosis.

Re:What next the criminals recruit lots of cats?

[uninformedLuddite]

You could always salt the floor. I have heard that that screws up the dogs but it may just be an old wives tale.

Rats to detect mines

[Anonymous Coward]

Rats can also be trained to detect mines

Re:Rats to detect mines

[Anonymous Coward]

what as in no mine, no mine , no mine BOOOM!

Re:Rats to detect mines

[Anonymous Coward]

That rat was only one week away from retirement.

cost effective

[jarold]

that's a cost effective way. nice!

Re:I smell a rat.

[91degrees]

Well, the obvious one:

"I can't believe you snitched on me, you dirty rat!"

Derrick the police rat?

[MRe_nl]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_(TV_series)

Re:Derrick the police rat?

[santax]

Yeps, they are named after famous tv-detectives. I found that rather funny.

Still better than sensors

[Camembert]

I find it remarkable and interesting that we still can't or at least not easily produce eith sensors the sniffing capabilities of these critters.

Re:Still better than sensors

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I find it remarkable and interesting that we still can't or at least not easily produce eith sensors the sniffing capabilities of these critters.

Aside from the fact that the answer would more or less inevitably involve some you-have-fun-fabricating-that micro to nanoscale arrangement of chemical receptors, we labor under the considerable difficulty that we don't really know how scent works.

With something like sight, it's possible to work more or less entirely independently of any real understanding of the eye, human or otherwise, because things like 'primary colors' and color mixing actually work pretty well at handling a wide variety of real-world problems and are simple enough that a decent art curriculum probably covered them before you finished high school. There are certainly horrible complexities ('metallic' isn't a color; but it certainly is a recognizable optical phenomenon, also, please characterize any deviations from the expected result when I take the idealized 24-bit RGB image displayed on my non-ideal 8-bit RBG monitor and send it over to my printer, using CMYK inks...); but 'just put a photosensitive material behind an array of R G and B filters' does actually work. If you proceed to brute-force the hell out of it, it works even better.

With something like scent, we know about plenty of strong and distinctive scents; but nothing 'primary'. Mixing is somewhere between unintuitive and pure black magic, prediction from chemical structures(even if perfectly well defined and provided in whatever form you prefer) is quite difficult outside of a few very well known areas, it's a total mess. Certainly, our ability to (cheaply and quickly, and from very small samples) analyze chemicals in the environment isn't as advanced as we would like; but even if it were, it's not as though we can see ourselves progressing toward the smelloscope, with some technical limitations (as we could in the early days of photography, were basically everything sucked; but basically everything was also precisely analogous to its better-refined contemporary chemical film systems), we'd just be better at identifying molecules flying around in the air.

Re:Still better than sensors

[jimshatt]

we'd just be better at identifying molecules flying around in the air

Which is the goal, ultimately. At least when used to detect drugs, explosives or other illegal substances. So even if it were easier to identify molecules flying around in the air than it is to build a smelling machine, it's easier still to use smelling animals.

Re:Still better than sensors

[oever]

The goal is to detect the presence of low amounts of certain molecules related to criminal activity. There is no need to detect scents. So the question is: why are there no cheap and portable detectors that find low concentrations of molecules in the air? Animal scent is based on vibrations in molecules that dock to receptors in the nose. This allows detection of very low concentrations of molecules. Similar systems can now be created artificially.

Re:Still better than sensors

[umafuckit]

Animal scent is based on vibrations in molecules that dock to receptors in the nose. This allows detection of very low concentrations of molecules. Similar systems can now be created artificially.

There is no compelling evidence that scent (animal or our own) is based upon "vibrations", although such theories do exist. Instead, it seem that odorant molecules bind to receptors in the nose in an analogous way to that by other ligand/receptor pairs, such as neurotransmitters to neurotransmitter receptors. The difference seems to be the most odorant receptors types bind to a range of different odorants. An animal such as s rat has hundreds of different classes of odorant receptor, each of which binds to different sub-sets of odors and so sees the world through a different lens. We think it's by comparing the activities of these different classes that odor discrimination is achieved.

Re:Still better than sensors

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that you could do it (if nothing else, cheat: anti-drug vaccines are a big area of research, so you can probably find somebody to sell you antibodies targeted at any of the major ones, at which point you smear it on a slide and work out a means of detecting antibody/antigen binding...); but that would probably be a good way to discover the other major virtue of animal olfactory systems:

With rather limited exceptions (certain contact anesthetics will temporarily knock the sense of smell offline, cocaine included if memory serves, and contact with something nasty enough to physically damage the sensory cells: eg. occupational ammonia exposure, squirting zinc solutions up your nose, will eventually toast the sense of smell entirely), organisms are pretty good at self-cleaning. Once exposure to a scent stops, the olfactory system is back and ready for action in short order. Whether this is because it employs some fancy non-binding mechanism, or because 'cells' are the closest things to sci-fi nanites that we know of, I don't know; but it works.

Antibody or chemical-reaction based systems are inherently consumable, and such specialized electronic gas sensors as do exist can be vulnerable to 'poisoning' by environmental contaminants. (Among the more obnoxious, catalytic methane sensors are poisoned by silicone vapors, as found in about a zillion elastomers, lubricants, and all sorts of other things. Just something to keep in mind if you ever find yourself in a coal mine... A poisoned methane sensor is indistinguishable from a methane sensor that just isn't detecting any methane, so replace regularly and avoid sparks and open flames.)

Re:Still better than sensors

[fustakrakich]

Gunpowder tastes horrible...

In Sovjet Netherlands ...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Sovjet Netherlands, Rat smells you!!!

Re:In Sovjet Netherlands ...

[Errol backfiring]

Sovjet? We have a king, you insensitive clod!

Re:Drop-in replacement

[santax]

Read the article, they are being used to sense gunpowder, not drugs. For once I actually think the police has got one hell of a new co-worker, the lady that noticed the mine-sniffing rats from the army could also be used in the police force to quickly get an idea if someone had fired a gun or not. I am sure there will still be lab-tests, but at least they can go on with their investigation based on a pretty acurate source.

Re:I smell a rat.

[Cryacin]

That's just cheesy.

Re:I smell a rat.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Commence rat jokes.

Bah, rat jokes are stupid, as opposed to generic rodent jokes. But don't expect me to beaver away at them so that you could just squirrel them.

Re:I smell a rat.

[Buchenskjoll]

Has the procedure been rat-ified?

Are capable of being trained?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cut the manager-speak. "Can be trained".

Pounds?

[pahles]

In the Netherlands rats (and dogs) as well as their training are paid in Euros, not Pounds...

Re:Pounds?

[Gorath99]

In the Netherlands rats (and dogs) as well as their training are paid in Euros, not Pounds...

I suppose they're paid in pounds of food. Though in that case it is more properly kilos.

Re:Pounds?

[SirGarlon]

Yeah, but the original story was from wired.co.uk, so the original author converted the cost to UK currency for his intended audience. It does look weird when the story gets re-circulated outside the UK.

Re:Pounds?

[jimshatt]

It should read "Detective Derrick and his rat partners cost just eight pounds on the head each and are capable of being trained to...". Because while rats don't care about money, they dislike being pounded on the head a lot.

Re:Pounds?

[bitt3n]

In the Netherlands rats (and dogs) as well as their training are paid in Euros, not Pounds...

if I were a dog, I would be pretty miffed if a pound was my reward after years of faithful service

Re:Pounds?

[Bacon Bits]

The article, if you scroll to the bottom, originates from wired.co.uk. The author chose to localize the currency, which is fairly standard practice.

According to EU rules

[Vinegar Joe]

They must be Rattus Norvegicus.

Re:According to EU rules

[OptimalCynic]

Which is ironic as Norway isn't in the EU.

Re:Drop-in replacement

[SirGarlon]

Presumably rats can be trained to sniff for other substances, as well. It's an open question whether each rat could be trained to detect more than one substance, or detectives would have to carry around a golf bag of rats, each wearing a little jacket labeled with what substance it can sniff. Still, better to carry a golf bag of rats than a golf bag of German shepherds!

Rat Training Survival

[Anonymous Coward]

The training procedure is straightforward: the rats are kept in a cage with four metal tea strainers attached inside, one of which contains gunpowder. When the rat recognizes the smell, it is rewarded with a "click" and a small treat.

When the wrong one is identified, the gunpowder is ignited. Then training begins for the next rat.

Damn

[sproketboy]

Even dogs are getting outsourced now. :(

Re:Damn

[CFBMoo1]

It's a dogs life even for canines.

Fairy tales

[Dunbal]

This reminds me of a fairy tale. Now what was the moral of the tale again? Ahh yes, I remember...

Better Than Dogs

[EndlessNameless]

Since rats do not learn human social cues readily, it would be difficult for anyone to teach it to "hit" on a person or vehicle they want to search.

This offers a modest resistance to misuse (compared to police dogs).

Re:Better Than Dogs

[OptimalCynic]

"Since rats do not learn human social cues readily" - based on what? Ours learn social cues very quickly. They bond to their people more closely than dogs.

Re:Drop-in replacement

[IndustrialComplex]

Spice weasels.

This may also remove the bias

[SuperBanana]

Dogs are mostly interested in being good pack animals and pleasing the alpha. When your handler is pleased by getting to search vehicles/bags/etc...

I'm almost completely convinced that police dogs are merely a slight sophistication of "Hey look, *smash*, your taillight is out."

Do rats have such social capabilities?

Re:This may also remove the bias

[OptimalCynic]

Rats are exceptionally social animals. They don't accept humans as their alpha, although they are willing to adopt them as a particularly stupid baby.

Re:Drop-in replacement

[OptimalCynic]

Most adorable uniform ever.

Re:'Recruit' is the wrong word here...

[OptimalCynic]

No, rats love to do tricks like that (my partner breeds them).

Gunpowder?

[rubycodez]

Is that a single, double or triple base gunpowder? Or black powder? be embarrassing to have the rats trained to find what the bad guy's aren't using in their pipe bomb.