US Army To Train Rats To Save Soldiers' Lives

Hugh Pickens writes "The Department of Defense currently relies on dogs as the animal of choice for explosives detection but training dogs is expensive and takes a long time. Now the U.S. Army is sponsoring a project to develop and test a rugged, automated and low-cost system for training rats to detect improvised explosive devices and mines. 'The automated system we're developing is designed to inexpensively train rats to detect buried explosives to solve an immediate Army need for safer and lower-cost mine removal,' says senior research engineer William Gressick. Trained rats would also create new opportunities to detect anything from mines to humans buried in earthquake rubble because rats can search smaller spaces than a dog can, and are easier to transport. Rats have already been trained by the National Police in Colombia to detect seven different kinds of explosives including ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, gunpowder and TNT but the Rugged Automated Training System (Rats) research sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, plans to produce systems for worldwide use since mines are widespread throughout much of Africa, Asia, and Central America and demining operations are expected to continue for decades to restore mined land to civilian use. 'Beyond this application, the system will facilitate the use of rats in other search tasks such as homeland security and search-and-rescue operations" adds Gressick. "In the long-term, the system is likely to benefit both official and humanitarian organizations.'" A rodent-vs-mine matchup has apparently been in the works for some time.

The Story of Minsc and Boo

[Tynin]

When I read the article, it reminded me of the story behind the Baldurs Gate characters Minsc and Boo. Apparently, Minsc's character game from an actual pencil & paper DnD game where he was a ranger who would keep a satchel full of rats with him. The purpose of the rats were to be uses as crude trap detectors, take one out of the bag and direct it to run down some hall, usually with a toss in the right direction. Unfortunately during one of these events, a trap exploded and loosed something that smashed into Minsc head with critical damage. Some time later, after Minsc recovered, his intelligence was significantly lowered and he lost most of his memory, to the point he went from a ranger to a barbarian. He found a lone critter still in his old satchel, and thought he was a long lost friend, Boo the gigantic miniature space hamster.

I wish the Army great successes in this small animal trap detecting program!

I'm half trolling...

[Anonymous Coward]

... but that means the other half is serious...

How about not-starting a new war every other decade? Only start one every 5 decades, one that really matters and there won't be the need for constant bomb-detection in rebellion-like war settings.

It's just a random, naive thought and of course makes much less billions for those who have an interest in keeping the army in constant action.

Give me a rat and I'll make you an army.

[Narcocide]

As far as using mice goes, they need to be very good. The UN does accredition for most humanitarion demining, so the mice will need to find all the mines in a training field before they're allowed to do real work. I really don't see that happening anytime soon.

The rest all sounds quite reasonable and true, so you do deserve to know that it makes a difference the article is talking about rats not mice. While their outright combat effectiveness may be about equal, there is in fact an order of magnitude of intelligence difference between rats and mice. It is not a commonly known fact but rats are actually in the caliber of the intelligence of some of the smarter dog breeds and are very industrious in nature making them natural problem solvers and eager trainees. Since they reach maturity so fast (~3 year max life span) and it takes far less food and space to keep them healthy it is reasonable to expect you could train a whole lot more of them in a shorter amount of time to do just as good of a job as a dog.

Plus they're vermin so less people are gonna cry about it if a few explode.