10/18/2005: Mine fishing with a rat

[magilla]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

What is left unsaid is how often the scratching rat sets off the mine. Sad. Clearly they have developed this system to let the distant (and protective-suited) humans to stand a few yards away while the rat does his business.

Quite a few years ago I helped a sightless friend of mine prepare a term paper on the rights of humans to use animals in various circumstances. She had many, many examples, the most obvious one being her guide dog. She also had reports of Russians in World War II training dogs to associate the underside of German tanks with food. They would have explosives strapped to their backs, and when released on the battlefield they would run under the tanks and BOOM. Finally, she had documents from Vietnam describing the use of dogs to detect boobytraps. The score on that one was: Traps detected: thousands. Dogs injured/killed: None.

It is certainly not in the interests of the trainers to treat the rats as expendable. They represent a considerable expense in terms of time and effort. I bet the rats don't suffer a high mortality rate.

Have a look at

http://www.aeaf.org/papers/1997-11-ian-feinhandler.htm

Chris

[capnhowdy]

Hawaii? I dunno... We destroyed 13,000 from Johnston Island, which is 800 miles from Hawaii but we still have nearly 90,000 more stockpiled in 4 different states. All these were in storage and not planted as far as I know. Did I miss something?

[Carbonated_Brains]

One of the main reasons they use Gambian rats isn't their smarts, it's their stupidity. They don't develop the same Pavlovian tricks that dogs do.

Over time, an explosive-sniffing dog will learn that finding a spot on the ground will get it a bite of food, and the rate of false positives goes up like crazy. Every dog has to be retired after a fairly short time. Similar things happen with drug dogs at the airport, although vastly more money goes into training them.

One of the more promising technologies for finding mines is a genetically engineered flower that will grow a different colour in the presence of the volatile organic compounds given off by explosives.

You airdrop ten thousand seeds, wait a week, and over each mine is a big red flower, in a sea of yellow ones.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by capnhowdy

Hawaii? I dunno... We destroyed 13,000 from Johnston Island, which is 800 miles from Hawaii but we still have nearly 90,000 more stockpiled in 4 different states. All these were in storage and not planted as far as I know. Did I miss something?

My mother was married at Hickam AFB and lived on Oahu in off-base housing. My father was assigned to a group that sampled radioactive clouds, which was pretty big deal stuff in the 1950s. At that time there were beaches that were still restricted because of leftover WWII landmines.

[barefoot serpent]

minefield practical jokes