Giant rats help sniff out land mines in Cambodia

In Cambodia, African giant pouched rats are being used to detect land mines, thanks to their strong sense of smell. Trained by APOPO, these rats are proving vital in clearing war-era explosives, saving lives across heavily mined regions

Siem Reap: Rats may send some squealing, but in Cambodia, teams of the not-so-little critters have become indispensable in helping specialists detect land mines that have killed and maimed thousands in the Southeast Asian country.

The African giant pouched rats, which can grow up to 45 cm (around 18 inches) and weigh up to 1.5 kg, are on the front line, making their way nimbly across fields to signal to their handlers when they get a whiff of TNT, used in most land mines and explosive ordnance.

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“While working with these rats, I have always found mines and they have never skipped a single one,” said Mott Sreymom, a rat handler at APOPO, a humanitarian demining group that trains and deploys rodent detection teams across the world. “I really trust these mine detection rats,” Mott said while working on a land mine field in the province of Siem Reap.

After three decades of conflict in the previous century, remnants of war littered approximately 4,500 square kilometers of Cambodian land, according to a survey by the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA) in 2004.

This affected all 25 Cambodian provinces and nearly half of the country’s 14,000 villages. As of 2018, CMAA reported 1,970 square kilometers remain uncleared. The rats have a keen sense of smell, making them a favourite at APOPO, which also employs land mine-detecting dog teams.

“Dogs and rats are better compared to other animals because they are trainable,” said Alberto Zacarias, a field supervisor of APOPO’s technical survey dog teams, adding that they are also friendly and easily learn commands.

Since demining officially began in Cambodia in 1992, more than 1.1 million mines have been cleared, as well as approximately 2.9 million other explosive remnants of war, according to a 2022 government demining progress report. And the African giant pouched rats are doing their part.

“We work with them almost daily, so we get closer,” Mott said. “They are very friendly and they don’t move around and get scared. They are like family.”