Sniffer Mice Smell Landmines

(New York City) The threat of landmines, which reportedly kill about 70 people every day worldwide, is being addressed by development of genetically-modified rats and mice, capable of sniffing out explosives.

The concept of using rats to sniff out landmines began with HeroRats, giant African pouched rats who, after nine months of training, can detect TNT even when the source is underground. When a HeroRat catches the telltale scent of TNT, it scratches at the ground and makes a clicking noise to let its handler know that it has come across a buried landmine.

Two HeroRats and a handler can cover 300 square feet in under two hours, as compared to the two days that it would take two people with metal detectors to cover the same area.

Researchers at Hunter College in New York also began recruiting mice (dubbed MouSensors) to sniff out landmines; however, to eliminate the training step, they genetically modified their mice so that they were extremely sensitive to the smell of DNT, a close relative of TNT.[…]

Before the MouSensors can be of use as bewhiskered landmine detectors, researchers still need to develop a ‘readout’ for their sensitivity, or some signal which would indicate the presence of TNT comparable to the HeroRats' clicking and scratching.

Reportedly the rats and mice are too small and light to trigger detonations of the landmines.