Rats with a mission.

• Position: Rodents - Use of trained African giant pouched rat for detecting land mines - Brief article

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

These rodents would send cats fleeing: They're about 30 inches long, including the tail. But the African giant pouched rat has become a hero to humans. A Dutch company, Apopo, has trained them to detect land mines. The rats are too light to set off the mines, and they can explore a suspected minefield and point with their noses to buried mines. After several months of training, a rat can clear as much land in 20 minutes as a human can in two days.

The United Nations estimates that more than 2,000 people a month are killed or maimed by mine explosions worldwide. In Mozambique, where 3 million mines were...