According to Kirsty Brebner, a member of Endangered Wildlife Trust, Africa’s giant rats have been trained to sniff out landmines and detect tuberculosis in humans.
At an event in Nairobi, she said that the rats would be also be trained to help detect illegal wildlife trade, especially in trophies by finding trophies being smuggled out of African ports.
The rats would be trained in such a way that they would detect even items stashed in coffee or other scent-masking substances in containers before they are loaded onto ships for export.
As disclosed by Brebner, the Endangered Wildlife Trust had the idea of putting rats to work on the illegal wildlife trade.
The U.S. financed project was still in its early stages, but the rats that would be trained to scuttle over shipping containers in search of pangolin scales were only born in October.
Brebner said the aim was to prove by late 2017, that their powerful sense of smell could distinguish the illegally traded items.
“They are clearly trainable, they have a strong sense of smell, the eventual aim is to train rats to find ivory and rhino horns too,’’ she said.
Brebner said the giant rats were chosen for the project for their longevity because they live as long as eight years.
She added that it would give a better return on the training investment and they don’t bond easily with handlers, so they would adapt to whoever uses them.
She also disclosed that the Endangered Wildlife Trust had long used dogs to trace wildlife trophies, but rats could scramble into small, dark places and could climb up containers.
Pangolins, a mammal hunted close to extinction for the unique scales on its body, which find a ready market in Asia, were the first target.
“The rats were tested and trained by APOPO, a Tanzanian-based group that pioneered the use of the African Giant Pouched Rat to find landmines.”