Cambodia was plagued with landmines and the efforts to remove all the mines have been rather impressive. The country is still digging up landmines as clearing them will take a long time due to the sheer number of mines and cluster munitions dropped on the country. On April 4th the world recognized Mine Awareness Day and in Cambodia they commemorated the efforts of rats in the finding and destruction of landmines.

Rats have been trained to sniff out the explosive material in landmines so landmine removal experts can then disarm (or otherwise deal with) the mines. Without a doubt many rats have died in their landmine removal efforts. Don’t worry though, most rats are too light to trigger the mines with one rat uncovering 109 landmines. The statue located in Siem Reap is dedicated to all the rats, but is modelled after the most successful one.

Magawa, an African giant pouched rat, was trained by the Belgian charity Apopo before moving to Cambodia to begin his bomb-sniffing career in 2016.

Using his acute sense of smell and training to detect a chemical compound within explosives, Magawa would then alert human handlers of mines that could be later safely removed.

During his time, Magawa cleared more than 141,000 square metres (1,517,711 sq ft) of land – the equivalent of 20 football pitches – and could search a field the size of a tennis court in just 20 minutes.

Read more.

If you want to know more about landmines and how countries remove them then I highly suggest looking into the Mines Advisory Group, who have an excellent information centre in Laos.

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