Rat sniffing landmine. Photo by Xavier Rossi, courtesy of Apopo's Herorats

It costs as little as €2 to place a landmine, but it can cost as much as €700 to clear one. That difference underscores the challenge in clearing antipersonnel mines. Some traditional methods, such as using metal detectors and trained dogs, are still expensive and time consuming. But in southern Mozambique a more cost and time-effective approach is being used with remarkable success: rats.

Bart Weetjens, a Belgian product engineer with a lifelong love of rodents, first thought about it after reading a scientific article on the olfactory skills of gerbils in detecting explosives. If dogs were being used to find landmines, why couldn't rats do the same? Weetjens, whose work centred on making prosthetics sustainable, decided instead to focus on detecting the landmines that cause those injuries. Africa has the largest number of landmine victims in the world, so he established himself in Tanzania, where his NGO, known as APOPO, is still based.

Rat and operator with landmines. Photo by Xavier Rossi, courtesy of Apopo's Herorats

Despite widespread scepticism, Weetjens's idea proved successful and de-mining began in 2004 in the Mozambican province of Gaza. To this day, APOPO's rats have cleared over 1 million square metres of land in the impoverished country. Mozambique, which was left riddled by mines after a 16-year civil war that ended in 1992, is now on track to become landmine-free by 2014.

Today, Apopo has 45 trained African giant pouched rats operating in Mozambique. Another 300 are in various stages of training at facilities in Morogoro, Tanzania.

Landmines. Photo by Xavier Rossi, courtesy of Apopo's Herorats