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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Sci­ence and So­ci­ety

Using rats in the battle against crime

by

20140608

Rat­ting on crim­i­nals is an es­sen­tial mech­a­nism in the fight against crime, and this is nor­mal­ly done by whistle­blow­ers and finks (in­form­ers).The rats re­ferred to here are the four-legged va­ri­ety found in re­search labs.They are quick learn­ers and have sen­si­tive noses, and hence can be trained for the te­dious and dan­ger­ous work in­volved in iden­ti­fy­ing drugs and ex­plo­sives.In Na­ture On­line, in 2002, it was re­port­ed that the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bal­ti­more was us­ing rats, fit­ted with mo­tion sen­sors, to de­tect co­caine.

The rats were trained to rear up on their hind legs when they de­tect­ed co­caine. This ac­tion was trans­mit­ted to a com­put­er which iden­ti­fied their lo­ca­tion and hence that of the il­lic­it drugs.The use of rats in the fight against drugs and crime is grow­ing. In Mozam­bique, gi­ant "hero rats" were suc­cess­ful­ly used to de­tect more than 2,000 land mines, near­ly 1,000 bombs and thou­sands of small arms and am­mu­ni­tion.

They cleared over six mil­lion square me­tres (about two and one third square miles) of land. Coun­tries in­vest­ing in their use in­clude USA, Is­rael, Nether­lands and Colom­bia.So why rats? As point­ed out ear­li­er they are quick learn­ers and have su­pe­ri­or sniff­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties.They can be trained to de­tect drugs, ex­plo­sives, gun­shot residue, blood and oth­er sub­stances.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers


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