Land mines and tuberculosis are no match for Tanzanian ‘hero rats’ sniffing out danger and disease

MOROGORO: A man lies unmoving, slumped in the rubble of a simulated earthquake, as an unlikely rescuer approaches: a rat with a backpack. Whiskers waving, the rat breezes past garbage, toppled furniture and scattered clothes to find him and pull a trigger on its pack, alerting searchers above. Then a resounding click. A survivor has been found. The search in Morogoro in Tanzania’s Uluguru Mountains is over and the rat scurries out of the abandoned building to be rewarded with a banana.

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