Genetically Modified (GM) landmine sniffing mice are now a reality. Scientists have created “MouSensor”, which is being hailed as a great way to deal with past wars.
Charlotte D’Hulst of Hunter College, New York, led the team and had this to say:
Long after wars have ended, communities are still impeded from going back to their normal, daily activities because of all these mines still affecting their land.
“HeroRats” are giant puched rats and could be trained to sniff out landmines by the Belgian NGO, Apopo.
Two of these rats, with the assistance of a human handler, are able to clear 300 square meters in under two hours. This is lightspeed fast compared to humans, although the rats to required nine months of training.
More rats are planned to be sensitive to other explosives.
D’Hulst goes on:
We are thinking along the lines of implanting a chip under the skin of these animals that would wirelessly report back to a computer when the animal’s behaviour is changing upon being triggered by a TNT landmine.
As always, the best part of the article came in the comments section.
jstaguy:
Let me get this straight:
- People can put a rover on another planet, make that rover send us email, pics, conduct science experiments on another planet, send us results, analyze chemicals, even locate that rover exactly on the landscape of an unknown terrain, but we can use that rover or other similar technology to find land mines?
- And we have to depend on rats to solve our problems here?
Is it just me, or does it look like we’ve got the wrong people thinking about the landmine problem?
Looks like no one really cares about the landmine problem – and these scientists that works on rats – just want to get written about – so that they can get funding – and no one will remember how much money was spent on rats – and how many land mines they defused…. just more baloney (not the rats’ science – just that we still haven’t solved the land mine problem)
As someone else noted, the anti-war, anti-gmo, animal rights activist must be losing their minds over this. Can you blame them?
