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The real clicker heroes: how I train rats to sniff out explosives

Clever, cat-sized rodents are learning to clear land mines with the help of Bahati Abuu.
  1. Linda Nordling

    1. Linda Nordling is a freelance writer in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Bahati Abuu holding a hero rat in Tanzania.

Bahati Abuu is a rat trainer at APOPO, an NGO based in Morogoro, Tanzania, that trains dogs and rats to detect landmines and tuberculosis. Credit: Karl Mancini for Nature

“My job is to train rats to detect landmines so the explosives can be cleared to save lives. I work for a Belgian non-governmental organization called Apopo that operates from Morogoro, in my home country of Tanzania. The rats I train are used in mine-clearing programmes around the world, including in Angola, Azerbaijan and Cambodia.

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Nature 632, 468 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02542-y

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 12 August 2024: This Where I work article named the wrong species of rat: it should have been Cricetomys ansorgei.

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