First Person: 'I teach rats to locate landmines'

When I first approached people with the idea of using rats to find landmines they laughed at me. I spoke to the military in Belgium, where I'm from, and several other organisations but they said I was crazy.

It's now been 11 years since we trained our first rat and we've used them to help clear more than eight million square metres of land, uncovering about 3,000 mines and more than 1,000 unexploded bombs. There are now more than 300 rats working in places like Gaza, Mozambique, Thailand and Angola. Their sense of smell is much more advanced than a dog's, and they are much lighter and less likely to trigger a mine. We've never lost a rat in action - we call them Hero Rats.

They're trained to identify the smell of landmine materials - TNT is the most common explosive. I begin by putting a rat in a cage with pockets of different smells and when it identifies TNT by scratching the earth above it, the action is rewarded with food. They quickly learn the process and keep coming back for more food.

When we started training rats in real landmine areas, the results were incredible. Our main training centre is in Tanzania, where landmines have badly affected economic development.

I knew rats had a keen sense of smell because I've kept rodents since I was nine. I grew up in Antwerp and my first pet was a hamster called Goldie. He went everywhere with me, tucked inside my sweater, right under my armpit. I even took him to school until I was found out.

I bred hamsters and gerbils but rats were always the easiest to work with. They are smart, sociable creatures - it's just a shame that we have a fear of them spreading disease. This dates back to the Middle Ages, although it was actually the fleas living on the rats that spread the plague.

My first job was designing buses but it didn't suit me. I left and became unemployed, spending years trying to decide which career to follow next. It was a difficult time until I saw Princess Diana on TV talking about landmines. I began to dream up ways of curing a problem that affected people around the world. Even today, thousands are killed or seriously injured by landmines each year.

I was frustrated when my idea of using rats kept getting rejected. Then, after a few years, I got lucky. I met a former university lecturer and he thought the idea was ingenious. He put me in touch with the Belgium Development Corporation and I was finally given funding to start my research.

I decided to import giant pouched rats from Africa because they are easily trained. Turning them into domesticated animals that could be handled in a laboratory took two years but, eventually, they were tame enough to be fitted with a collar and lead. Then I started training them to identify the smell of landmine materials. Each rat has to go through a test before it is allowed to work, clearing a 24-hectare site and identifying 14 mine smells in the process.

I have a charity called Apopo that is developing other uses for rats too. One is identifying tuberculosis in human sputum. It would take a lab technician a whole day to work through 40 samples using expensive equipment - a rat does the same number in seven minutes.

I'm 47 now and feel happily accomplished. My work has been very rewarding and I'm grateful to those who gave me a chance to succeed. I work with many of the organisations that originally turned me down and we employ landmine victims too.

Ακολουθήστε το Euro2day.gr στο Google News!Παρακολουθήστε τις εξελίξεις με την υπογραφη εγκυρότητας του Euro2day.gr

FOLLOW USΑκολουθήστε τη σελίδα του Euro2day.gr στο Linkedin

And to think that it all started with a hamster called Goldie.

Photograph: Apopo

The article has been changed since it was originally published to reflect the fact that tuberculosis is not a viral infection

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation