The founder of Apopo, Bart Weetjens, is training rats to detect landmine explosives in minute amounts.
Why you should listen
Dutch product designer Bart Weetjens works with locals in Morogoro, Tanzania, to trains rats to do something astonishing: sniff out land mines. (The African giant pouched rat, the species used in the project, is widespread in the region.) The rats that pass the training -- and the same rigorous testing applied to land mine-sniffing canines -- become what Weetjens calls "HeroRATS."
Weetjens and Apopo.org are now applying a similar approach to other fields, training rats to diagnose tuberculosis in hospitals.
