A Rat Will Save Your Life

Rats, specifically the African giant pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei), have been used to find land mines or sniff out tuberculosis for decades. Now they are moving up the essential-worker ladder with a new gig: search and rescue.

In Tanzania the nonprofit APOPO has been training rats for the more specialized skill in their RescueRats project. The journal Science tracked down APOPO research scientist Donna Kean to find out why (and how).

Why: “The rats have a comparable sense of smell, and they’re just as trainable as dogs. They also aren’t tied to just one trainer, which is what you find with dogs. And their size is useful because they will be able to penetrate into areas with dense rubble and debris that dogs just wouldn’t be able to.”

How: “The first thing we did was train them to return to their starting point. A trainer released the rat in an empty room and let it wander around. We trained the rat to come back to the starting point when we played a beep.” The rats are then rewarded with food pellets mixed with avocado and banana. Who wouldn’t come back?

The rescue rat is then trained to pull a tiny ball attached to its backpack when it finds a disaster victim. The ball signals the human rescuers who can then easily find the person in trouble.

Won’t the sight of a rat freak out someone who’s trapped in a disaster setting? Kean says the rats’ backpack can be equipped with an audio recording: “I am a RescueRat, I’m here to help you.” If that doesn’t calm nerves, one look at a rat in a rescue vest should do it. They are adorable.

Watch a rescue rat training session here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWIeu6JFvFQ

Photo credit: APOPO