"Bomb Squad Rats" - Video

Look at these nice rats !!!
Helping to clear land mines...for a little bite of over-ripe banana...

As an animal lover i know i should be outraged.

but for some reason im just not..

perhaps its because thousands of rats die each year testing everything from cosmetics to food, and to me this sounds like a much more noble sacrifice.


before you tell me thats wrong im going to add that
i still cant rationalize my double standard to myself .

i mean i know if they were using dogs i would be outraged...


~meathead

[edit on 2-7-2010 by Mike Stivic]

reply to post by Mike Stivic


If you would have watched the video *Ahem*...
Then you would know that the rats sniff out bombs, and don't explode themselves. (just kidding about the above mate)

Rats are smarter than hell!

reply to post by Mike Stivic


They say the rats are not heavy enough to set off a land mine...I don't want to say the rats never get blown up, but the video says it takes two years to train them, and no rats got blown up in the video...so I bet it hardly ever happens, right?...




[edit on 2-7-2010 by nine-eyed-eel]

reply to post by nine-eyed-eel


yes i noticed they said that.. im not buying it, if that was the case they would use a smarter animal that are just as light like a small dog...thats my opinion i have been known to be wrong


~meathead

edit to add :to zomar i did watch the video i just dont believe rats dont ever trigger them.

in either case the use of the rats doesnt bother me where if it was another type of animal it probably would.. that was the gist of my initial post

[edit on 2-7-2010 by Mike Stivic]

As a domesticated housepet rat owner, I just wanna point out that the 'rats' in the video are actually a variety of Marsupial.


They look so very cute. I love animals that work.

reply to post by Mike Stivic


I agree I bet the rats do die occasionally...because the mines are just commercial industrial products, right, so they are bound to have different defects (just like Toyota Camrys, hee-hee) some of which might make them go off way easy...Plus we see the workers donning protective gear, so that tends to make you think there might be an unscheduled "BOOM" every so often, right...But if it takes two years to train the rats, I don't know what the cost/benefit calculus would be, but that does tend to make me think the rat is going to have a good period of not-getting-blown-up after that long training, right?...But yeah, some rats must get blown up, I feel certain...

reply to post by Mike Stivic


Yeah if they used dogs I would be very angry. Or any kind of animal really, if it involved the death of the animal.

Originally posted by LostNemesis
I love animals that work.

Animals work well, too, in my opinion...I think that's the main reason I liked this video...There are many cheap excellent things we could do with animals, if we bent our minds more in that direction...Animals are these clever little survival packets, just lying around, they know how to do lots of things because they have not survived this long by accident, know what I'm saying?

reply to post by nine-eyed-eel


Lookie here, these same nice rats detect tuberculosis !!!
Wikipedia on APOPO

Also, not to be pedantic, but I don't think the post about them being being marsupials was accurate...they are pouched but called muroid rodents...rodents are not marsupials, as I recall...
Wikipedia on African Giant Pouched Rat

And now they're living in the Florida Keys...who knew...

Uh-oh, and they are responsible for the US outbreak of monkeypox...BAD, BAD RATS...

[edit on 2-7-2010 by nine-eyed-eel]

So right.

Rats are intelligent as hell. They pick up tricks and behaviors really well, and they adapt quickly.

I am not sure about those Giant Gambian Rats in the video. I dunno much about Marsupials. Just that they are a lot less likely to be tamed than a standard rat.

As far as the rats getting 'blown up', at least they seem to be taken care of and live a good life before they go.

I am sure that the idea behind this is making sure that a HUMAN is not what unfortunately finds the bombs... lol

reply to post by LostNemesis


Yeah, and then all the cattle, too...
I think most people would rather blow up a rat than a cow, if somebody has to die, right?...as long as the cost of training a new rat was less than buying all the milk or meat you would get from the cow, hmm, maybe it depends on the actual math, relative-utility-of-trained-rat-versus-cow, sounds like a thesis project waiting to be written...

[edit on 3-7-2010 by nine-eyed-eel]