For many people rats are repulsive and evoke fear by their very presence. However, for people in landmine-infested areas of Africa, rats are heroes. That is because giant African pouched rats have been trained to sniff out landmines left over from years of civil war in countries like Mozambique.

Bart Weejens, a Buddhist monk born in Belgium, started APOPO, a nonprofit organization that trains the rats. Weejens had long loved rodents and in the early nineteen nineties the landmine issue was at the forefront of international concern. Weejens knew of the sniffing capability of rats and decided to try using rats to find landmines.

With some training rats are a perfect landmine detector. They are light enough to not set off landmines and are easy to transport to mine fields. They are also less expensive to train than dogs.

No rats have been killed while detecting landmines and only one human trainer has died, but that was the result of a car accident.

For a full story visit CNN.com.

To adopt a rat, visit HERORat.org.

Tags: giant african pouch rats, rats

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