Cambodia has recently unveiled a 7-foot statue of a rat named Megawa that spent five years helping clear hidden explosives in Cambodia’s minefields, helping return large areas of dangerous land to farms and families. In five years’ work, Megawa was credited with over 100 finds.
Megawa and others like him were trained by a Belgian charity for the work after the charity’s founders wondered why mine-clearing was taking so long. The answer was that the problem was not disposing of the mines but finding them; previously the work was done by dogs and humans, but rats have the advantage of having super-sensitive noses to locate the mines but being too light to trip them.
One of the program’s leaders told press that “They live for eight years, they’re calm animals, they’re easily trainable, they like repetitive tasks, they work for peanuts – literally, peanuts and bananas. And they’re very fast.” The African Giant Pouched Rat grows to about three feet long, including its 1.5-foot long tail but weigh under three pounds.
