If it has a scent, rats will find it...

All items release a specific scent, or odour signature, which comes from volatile compounds within that item. Many animals, including dogs, pigs, and even insects, are very good at distinguishing among these scents and this evolved ability aids their survival by helping them find food, avoid predators, and interact socially. The keen olfactory sense of dogs is widely recognized and for more than 10,000 years we humans have relied on dogsÕ noses to alert us to invaders, find lost stock, and obtain meat.

But it is giant African pouched rats, not dogs, that APOPO uses for scent detection. Olfaction is the primary sensory modality of rats, they have an extraordinarily high number of functional genes related to odour detection, and their sense of smell is keen. Moreover, they are hardy animals that are easy to maintain humanely, they learn quickly, and they do not bond to handlers as sometimes occurs with dogs. APOPO is committed to becoming a center of excellence for scent detection by rats and has developed effective general training procedures for teaching them to detect landmines and tuberculosis. Those procedures currently are being refined and adapted for other important uses, such as finding illicit drugs, tainted food, people trapped in rubble, and leaking gas lines.

As an aspiring center of excellence, APOPO conducts research using the methods of analytical chemistry, behavior analysis, and ethology to clarify the variables that influence rats' scent detection and to develop and extend humanitarian applications of its scent-detection technology. This work depends heavily on local labor and other resources and focuses on producing sustainable technologies appropriate for use in developing countries.

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