maybe a hybrid greyhound on a lead racing around a track,
a racing rat being held back perhaps, in fact it is a rat that has been trained in land-mine-detecting, the African giant pouched rat (Cricetomys gambianus) from Tanzania, APOPO which stands for Anti-Persoonsmijnen Ontmijnende Product
Ontwikkeling in Dutch, or Anti-Personnel Landmines Detection Product
Development in English, is an organisation that trains and deploys rats, (they are not true rats), named
HeroRATS, for the detection of
abandoned land mines and tuberculosis, yes I did say and
tuberculosis, about 54 rats are currently serving in 19
TB clinics in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam, since 2002, they’ve
screened 226,931 samples and identified 5,594 TB patients,
back to landmine clearing, since 2000, APOPO have bred hundreds of trained and
accredited rats that have so far found 1,500 buried land mines across an area
of 240,000 metres squared in Tanzania, and 6,693 land mines, 26,934 small arms
and pieces of ammunition, and 1,087 bombs across 9,898,690 metres squared in
Mozambique, they’re also operating in Thailand, Angola, Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos and don’t panic, they’re too light
to be setting off any buried explosives, but if you are
the operator of one just remember not to get too close when it says,
'I have found one!'
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