A Dutch engineer has created a high-tech electronic backpack for rats that are being trained as rescue rats, to be sent into buildings after earthquakes or floods to search for survivors.
Sandor Verdiesen is already familiar with rats and their highly-evolved sense of smell as a volunteer with a Belgian-American non-profit, APOPO, which sponsors projects in which rats are trained to track down landmines and tuberculosis. He told RTL Nieuws that “We train them in a designated space, with rubble and stuff to distract them to see if they can find the person and then come back to where they went in.”
Verdiesen mentioned two other issues: the difficulty of signal transmission from below ground, and the attention span of the rats. “As far as the rats are concerned we need to find out how sensitive they are to distractions. What if it comes across a kitchen full of cheese?”
Cheese aversion therapy?
I guess cheese was more artistically interesting in mouse cartoons than peanut butter.
Actually, my latest purchase of mousetraps came with a flyer imploring me to forget the stereotype about rodents and cheese, since they are primarily seed and nut eaters. The recommended bait is peanut butter!