STORY: Rats as rescue workers. A team from the Belgian non-profit organization APOPO is researching this in Tanzania. More details come from lead researcher Dr. Donna Kean: “Rats are just as easy to train as dogs. They have an excellent sense of smell and their small size and agility should hopefully make them good supporters in many a scenario where they need to squeeze into small spaces to get closer the victims approach.” However, the rats being trained here are not the usual rodents commonly associated with garbage and disease in European countries. But they are African giant possums. Training for these future rescuers began in August 2021 at a research center run by a university in Morogoro, Tanzania. Among other things, the rats are trained to locate people in a simulated disaster area, for example after an earthquake. And they will be equipped with a special backpack designed to enable wireless live transmission of image and sound. The organization has already had good experience with rats that have been trained to detect landmines, for example.