These Huge Rats Can Sniff Out Land Mines | National Geographic

2m read

·Nov 11, 2024

We bring the Gambian Jan rats from Africa to sniff out the landmines in Cambodia. There is a two million landmines spread out in Cambodia. Two hundred to three hundred people got injured by landmines and you SOS every year.

These rats look similar to the rodents we know; the difference is that these are white rats. They do not see the rats that are used to be in our houses, so they are bigger than the rodents that we know. They are faster than a human. Why are they faster? Because the rats are only going for TNT smell, and the human using his metal detector is going for all kinds of metals.

In a 5 by 20 meters box, a trained rat can finish the box in 16 to 25 minutes only. If we use the manual metal detector, it can take two days or three days to finish. For us, just leave your rat if you get free for quite some time, and then we get, oh! We can tell a dog to sit; it can sit. You tell a dog to go; it can go. But a rat cannot understand all those kinds of things.

So, we only communicate with them by using a clicker. When the rat smells TNT, it starts to scratch, and then I have to click and give food to the rats. By the size, I feel very, very emotional. I got very, very, very, very, very excited. I don’t know who or who is who. I don’t know. They not only click for food; now I want to touch the rats.

If I see four regions right on the rat that is hit by a car, then it pains me a lot. They laugh like his brother or her sister. Sometimes they carry like his baby or her baby. As we know, landmines are dangerous for our lives. If our rats are able to discover landmines, then they save lives.

I hope that in the future, the people of Cambodia will get enough land to live and improve their lives.

Win Without Trying (A Taoist simile about losing your flow)

Simplifying quotient of powers (rational exponents) | Algebra I | High School Math | Khan Academy

View All

Causation from 1980-2020

From our first lesson focusing on the migration of indigenous people to the land mass that today comprises the United States, we’ve made it all the way to the present. A journey in time of more than 15,000 years. We’ve looked most closely at the last 500 …

Esteem | Vocabulary | Khan Academy

Hey there, wordsmiths! I must tell you I feel quite good about this word, esteem. Esteem, it’s a noun; it means respect. You can hold someone in high esteem, which means you have a lot of respect for them, or you can have high self-esteem, respect for yo…

Snatoms! The Magnetic Molecular Modeling Kit

Imagine this is a hydrogen atom. This is another one, and then this is H2, the hydrogen molecule. You can break it apart, add an oxygen atom and make H2O—water. A carbon with four hydrogens, that is methane. And you can actually combine it with water to m…

Ron Howard on Science and Technology | Breakthrough

Science is everywhere, and science and technology is moving at such a pace that it’s a huge challenge to keep up with it. It’s therefore all the more dynamic, all the more fascinating to try to capture a moment, understand it now, have it there for the fu…

Crazy BABY Eyes ... and More: IMG! #44

This cow has an illusion face. See the people about to kiss? And oh my gosh, what’s this? Nice. It’s episode 44 of IMG! If you eat too many Pringles you’ll feel like this. And if you look like this, your kids will too. Now, if you look at this right in t…

The Zipf Mystery

Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. About 6 percent of everything you say and read and write is the “the” - is the most used word in the English language. About one out of every 16 words we encounter on a daily basis is “the.” The top 20 most common English words …

These Huge Rats Can Sniff Out Land Mines | National Geographic

More Articles