Heroic Rats

Rats have been a source of much rage and fear for their various behaviors and disease-carrying proclivities. But they are an impressive evolutionary smelling machine and pretty easy to train. Researchers have trained rats to use their remarkable sense of smell for a variety of heroic deeds that are saving many human lives. These are their stories... dun dun.

Recommendations

• Abraham: Saosin (self-titled) https://music.apple.com/us/artist/saosin/28673579
• Shane: Heretics of Dune (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/303821/heretics-of-dune-by-frank-herbert/)

Links:

1. https://www.discovery.com/nature/rats-are-being-trained-to-rescue-earthquake-survivors-
2. La Londe, et al. (2014) - Training pouched rats to find people. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 48(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.181
3. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/giant-rats-trained-sniff-out-tuberculosis-africa/
4. Poling, A., Weetjens, B., Cox, C., Beyene, N., Durgin, A., & Mahoney, A. (2011). Tuberculosis detection by giant african pouched rats. The Behavior analyst, 34(1), 47–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03392234
5. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/23/rats-who-sniff-out-tubersulosis
6. Kanaan, R., Farkas, N., Hegyi, P., Soós, A., Hegyi, D., Németh, K., Horváth, O., Tenk, J., Mikó, A., Szentesi, A., Balaskó, M., Szakács, Z., Vasas, A., Csupor, D., & Gyöngyi, Z. (2021). Rats sniff out pulmonary tuberculosis from sputum: a diagnostic accuracy meta-analysis. Scientific reports, 11(1), 1877. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-81086-x

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Episode Transcript

(00:03):
You're listening to Why we do whatwe do? Welcome to Why we do
what we do. I am yourscurrying host Abraham, and I'm your master
splinter host Shane. Oh, that'sa good one. Or a psychology podcast.

(00:25):
We talk about all the cool thingsthat people do, and sometimes we
talk about the cool things that animalsdo. And that's kind of what we're
talking about today. I mean,isn't it always that the things that animals
do are way cooler than the thingsthat humans do most of the time.
I mean, like, think aboutthis, Our last episode with scientology very
not cool. This is way cooler, endured. Yeah, So, anyway,

(00:49):
as I said, we talk aboutthe psychology thing. If you're joining
us for the first time, thenwelcome. I think this is gonna be
a really cool one. This isI think more par for the course with
the kind of topics that we tendto do. And it's also is it's
fairly quick, so we'll get intoa sort of our big intro and we'll
unpack it and all of that.But I don't think this is going to
be one of our longer ones.Although as we always say, we drag

(01:10):
things out, you know, atnauseum. So we'll see. It's a
skill set. It is a skillset. And Shane, do you know
a day that this episode comes out? Wednesday? It does come out Wednesday.
Thank you. That was really good. Comedy chops excellent. It's late
at night. I'm tired, I'mdelirious. It's great. It comes out

(01:30):
one week after our last episode andone week before our next episode. In
fact, wild so predictable. Thiscomes out on May twenty fourth, and
May twenty fourth has a few holidaysthat we'll recognize. Not as many as
some other days, but it's gotsome holidays to talk about. Yeah,
so today's Brother's Day, so Iget to celebrate my little brother and I
will as well. You're gonna celebratemy little brother too. That's great.

(01:52):
Yeah, yeah, he's the past. I wish it was my little brother.
It is also Tiera Day for thoseof you wearing tiaras or tierras how
you like to say it. Andif you have your tierra and it's not
adjusted, please take some time toadjust it, because you deserve that,
queen. Indeed. Also, it'sScavenger Hunt Day, which is so much
fun. Yeah, love scavenger hunts. It is aviation maintenance technician day,

(02:15):
so appreciate those people who help keepthe planes in the sky and not falling
to the ground. Interesting, mybrother in law's a helicopter mechanics, so
that's perfect good job. Justin It'salso International Heritage Breeds Day Breeds Week I'm
sorry week, even so we getseven of them. It's right to seven
consecutive celebration. I had to lookinto this one because I was a little

(02:36):
curious what that meant, and ithas to do with how as we've practiced
agriculture, we've sort of bred animalsinto this weird chimera of not what they
used to be, and so theHeritage Breeds celebrates and promotes the idea and
practice of maintaining some of those speciesas they were before we started turning them

(02:58):
into sheens for human consumption. Yes, yeah, I got you, Yeah,
before they got all weird. Verygood, all right now, As
just as a quick thing, peoplewho listen to us, thank you so
much for being here. People whoare joining us for the first time,
either way, wherever you fall,if you would like to support us,
you can do that several ways.You can join us on Patreon, you

(03:19):
can pick up some merchant our store. You can like and subscribe, you
can leave a rating in review.You can tell a friend about us.
You can adopt two rats, nameone of them why we do and the
other one what we do. Andif you do that, please post about
it and tag us in those Yeah, and I'll talk more about how you
can support us at the end ofthis topic. And if you would like
to reach out to us directly,you can email us at info at WWDWWD
podcast dot com. Let's get intoour top RC. Yes, let's talk

(03:43):
about this. Rats are rad ashell. Indeed. All right, now,
let's set the stage. We're goingto tell this story for Matt style.
So picture this. It is twentysixteen. There's a reporter for The
Guardian. It is journalist Emma Youngand she just gcribes an encounter she had
and a lab in Tanzania. Yes, in her report, she describes a

(04:04):
compact, sweltering room within a compoundnestled in the verdant southern highlands of Tanzania.
By the way, Tanzania. Bestcoffee I've ever had was from Tanzania.
Off to try that awesome, Yeah, oh my god. It came
from a very specific farm it's likea very specific batch, but it was
delicious when I had it. Nicenow, and an intriguing scene that unfolded.

(04:25):
On a mid December day, threetechnicians adorned in white lab coats observed
an intricate glass and metal chamber anda sizeable brown pouch rat named Charles.
What a great name, right,So with care, Charles was lowered into
the chamber. His snout poised towarda sequence of ten sliding metal plates positioned
at the base of the chamber.So a technician unlatched the first plate,

(04:47):
unveiling a small hole, and Charlesnasally explored this hole, his acute old
factory senses at work, but hedecided to move on. He did not
spending any time at this hole.The hole was promptly sealed with a resonant
click, and a subsequent plate wasslid open. So the next hole in
the sequence, This time Charles wasinterested. He sniffed intently, diligently scraping

(05:10):
his paws against the metal surface,his five claws spread resolutely, and a
technician observing this calls out, two, oh, yeah, that's what you
do when a rat scratches a hole. So all right, now near the
window. Charles colleague had a secretivechart, covertly obscuring its contents to avoid

(05:31):
contaminating their data collection. The techdiscreetly marked a tick Emma curiosity peaked glanced
over to glimpse the chart. Agrid of small boxes arranged in ten columns
and ten rows, each adorned witha distinct code within every line. Two
boxes were shaded gray, and nowa tick mark had been placed within a
white square. Charles, the indomitablerat had potentially saved someone's life. So

(05:57):
Charles, as we described kind ofalready as an African giant pouched rat,
and he belongs to a unique speciesendemic to the vast expanse of sub Saharan
Africa, and he's among a uniqueclick of especially trained rodents, one of
thirty of his kind residing and toilingdiligently in Moragoro, which I think is
the name of this sort of municipalette, if you will, situated a few

(06:19):
one hundred kilometers west of Tanzania's bustlingmetropolis. Der s Salam. I really
hope I did not butcher that.I'm sorry. And so we're talking about
these rats here, these extraordinary ratspartake in this groundbreaking endeavor, which is
to detect the presence of tuberculosis.And want to describe more about tuberculosis,

(06:40):
but briefly, it is a malevolentailment that ravages the lungs and jeopardizes countless
lives around the world. Yeah.It is also often referred to as the
consumption fact. Yes. Yes,so Charles was actually in a test and
the positive samples that he was smellinghad already been tested for tuberculosis or TV
with randomational samples in the mix,and he and his training two detect TV

(07:02):
was being compared against lab data andfurther, any positive samples would be then
sent to the lab to look atfor ATV diagnosis. Yep, kind of
cool. Yeah, absolutely, Soat this point, I'm kind I'm curious
and we're talking about these rats,and I'm curious how our listeners, how
did you feel about rats before hearingthe story, And I'm going to be

(07:24):
really curious to hear how you feelabout rats after the story, So be
prepared to fall in love with them. Now. John Oliver already kind of
is. He's pretty into erotic ratart, which he shows on his show.
But yeah, so we're going totell you all about these rats,
I do want to say, becausewe've described them as these African giant pouched

(07:44):
rats. They are large for rats, but they're not actually like huge.
They're not cat size or anything likethat. They're just kind of they're large.
They're on the large side for arat, but they're they're adorable.
Yeah, they're giant for rats,but not giant for other animals that are
actual giants. Yeah, not nearlyas large as like an elephant or a
blue whale. That'd be a horrifyingsized rat. Now let's talk for a

(08:05):
second because I think it's important tounderstand what these rats are doing this this
test. But they're doing in relationto what you described as a horrific disease
called tuberculosis. Now, what tuberculosisis, or we're going to short and
shorten it for TB as we goforward. It's an infectious disease that causes
lots of deaths worldwide, and eventhough there are vaccines and drugs available and

(08:26):
have been for a long time,TB still kills more people than any other
infectious disease. Isn't that wild?That's crazy, Like I had no idea.
Yeah, it is actually a surprising. It's kind of one of these
sneaky diseases you don't think about,but it's it's sort of out there doing
incredible damage all the time. Andaccording to the World Health Organization or WHO

(08:50):
exactly, there were about ten millionnew cases of TB in a recent year,
with one point two million deaths amongpeople without HI and an additional two
hundred and fifty one thousand deaths oftuberculosis patients among people who also had HIV.
That's wild, Yeah, it's rough, man, that's a huge number

(09:11):
of people. Now. The maingerm that causes TB is Mysobacterium tuberculosis.
It usually infects the lungs. However, it can also spread to other parts
of the body, like the lymphnodes, the kidneys, abdomen, skin,
bones, joints, and brain covering. So, I know we're talking
about rats, but you didn't expectthat we were talking about diseases in this
episode, not nearly this much.Now, after being exposed to the germ,

(09:33):
the tuberculosis bacteria, most people don'tget sick right away, but they
can have this dormant infection called latentTB. A small percentage of people with
latent TB, which is about fiveto fifteen percent will develop actual active TB
disease. People who are infected withboth TB and HIV are at a much

(09:54):
higher risk of getting sick with theactual TB disease. Now and the States,
it's recommended to screen all HIV infectedpatients for latent TV just in case.
And people with weakened immune systems orthose receiving certain types of treatment are
also more likely to develop active TBcompared to the general population. So you
can imagine like somebody who's on likean immuno suppressive type of medication or treatment,

(10:18):
like somebody who's maybe experiencing like cancertreatment HIV infected people make sense,
like all of these folks that havesuppressed immune systems are at risk here,
sure, yeah, good point.Okay, So every year, as we
said, there is a huge amountof spreading of this. If you were
to chunk get into a year,there's approximately nine million cases of new TB
diagnosed around the world, with aquarter of them a quarter of them in

(10:43):
the entire world, occurring in Africa. Sadly, Africa also has the highest
death rate, not like number,but rate from tuberculosis compared to other regions.
So not only do they have itspreading the most, but the people
who actually then die from it isthe the highest proportion of them occur even
inside that population, so unfortunate.Now, yeah, TB can be prevented

(11:05):
with the vaccine or treated with antibiotics, but if it's left untreated, it
can be fatal. And unfortunately,many patients with TB are never diagnosed,
which contributes to the spread of thisdisease. So it's kind of like early
I would say it's like early COVID, where like people you couldn't get diagnosed
because nobody knew what it was andit's spread so rapidly, but TB is
far more deadly, right, Andpart of the reason for this is that

(11:28):
the current microscope based test, whichhas been in use for a long time,
like this has been the way ofidentifying tuberculosis samples for one hundred and
twenty five years in Tanzania and otherfinancially limited countries. It's not that great
at detecting TV. It only detectsabout sixty percent of the cases, which
means that a good forty percent ofthose cases are not are showing up as

(11:52):
not being positive for TB. Eventhough those might then go on to cause
illness and death and spread to otherpeople and other more. By using this
detection method, the microscope based detection, the success rate drops even lower and
around twenty percent for people who arealso infected with HIV. So you if
you look at countries where you havehigh rates of HIV and high rates of

(12:15):
TB, and then it becomes evenmore difficult to detect TV and people who
have HIV. You can imagine thatthe detection system is like, I mean,
that's you're operating at like guesswork levelsat that point, right, that's
wild. I mean, it's it'snot efficient at all. Yeah, it's
an unfortunate system. It's it's reallya bummer that it's like that impactful and

(12:37):
that difficult to even get a handleon it because we can't figure out how
prevalent it is just by using thetools at sort of normal disposal. Right,
absolutely, So I feel like weget fewer ads when we criticize them.
So here are some amazing, incredibleproducts that you should definitely buy.

(13:01):
Okay, so we've largely been talkingabout tuberculosis, but we started this story
talking about Charles the rats. Solet's get back to Charles. Remember we
put him in this box, orthey put him in the box. This
is from the journalist's perspective, soshe reported this and he was smelling samples,
So in this box he smelled ahundred samples in that test and identified
every sample that had already been positivelyidd for tuberculosis. Further, he identified

(13:26):
twelve more that would go on forsecondary testing. As we said, their
testing is not great to try andconfirm if there is in fact tuberculosis there.
And Emma went on to describe howanother larger rat was added to the
chamber later after charles work was done, negus to go take a break,
get a smoke, you know thatsort of thing, And this new rat

(13:46):
is added to the chamber to lendhis nose to the same smelling tests as
Charles. So they're getting some confirmationon there. And the new rat,
his name is Vladdok, was evenfaster than Charles. In just fifteen minutes,
Vladdox test confirmed almost all of charlesIs correct detections and confirmed eight of
the ten known cases out of there, so eighty percent success there and indicated

(14:07):
an additional fifteen for subsequent testing.Wow, that's wild. Now these rats
do in twenty minutes what it wouldtake four days to accomplish using lab testing.
So think about that for a second. It takes four days to accomplish
this testing what a rat could doit in twenty minutes. And I think
it's important when we talk about thisbecause these are incredible animals with incredible old

(14:30):
factory senses who are like people areafraid of these things because they are incredibly
efficient and incredibly fast and just likereally good at what they do. Rats
are very good at what they doin general. Yeah, so you give
them a test like this, they'regonna be good at it. Yeah.
And actually, like that's a greatsegue because that's really what we should talk
about now, because we talked aboutrecently in an episode about dogs being trained

(14:52):
to detect oncoming seizures in our Marchfifteen, twenty twenty three episodes Seizure Alert
Dogs and that was amazing, likeamazing that they can do that. That
was also a Wednesday, It wasa Wednesday, good memory. And dogs
are primarily used for these various medicalsmell tests, but rats are another good

(15:15):
option. Now we've also mentioned briefly, and I think we should return at
this at some point, but beesare also being used to detect cancer,
and then rats are being used tosniff out diseases and as we'll talk about
later, land mines and other things. So these rats kind of have some
cool properties. Let's go ahead andtalk about that. These particular rats,
these giant African pout rats, donot have the evolutionary history of cooperation with

(15:37):
humans that dogs do. However,they are still trainable because you know,
they are living organisms. And also, although dogs, specifically the bloodhound,
have been shown to have the strongestsense of smell, the African pout rats
are very competitive because they've proved moreaccurate in those situations finding things like buried
land mines than dogs ever have.So these rats are incredibly powerful when it

(16:02):
comes to like this detection sense thatthey have. Yes, and this organization
has really invested heavily in the useof rats for these type of endeavors.
The organizations called a popo or apop pop I'm going to guess a popo
it stands for words that I'm notsure I should try and pronounce, for
fear of the butchering I will doand the shame it will bring on me

(16:22):
and the embarrassment potentially to the company. But the translation of a Popo's actual
name translates to anti personnel landmines detectionproduct development is what they do, and
this is this is a company thathas invested the use of these rats for
landmine detection primarily, but has expandedit. They've turned to using the rats
to also help detect tuberculosis. Imean, it's pretty incredible they were able

(16:45):
to do that. Now you wouldthink that and if this is an important
piece, You're talking about rats thatdetect these diseases and explosives, right,
two very different things, both thingsthat kill people, but also very different
things like I could have a badcough or I could explode. And so
when you start thinking about this,you kind of go, well, how
does this happen? And surprisingly thetraining is very similar, Like it's not

(17:10):
very different at all. So let'skind of break this up a little bit.
So as far as training goes,the first kind of element that we
look at is this idea of positivereinforcement. For those listening to the show,
you're probably familiar, but if you'renot, then basically what it is
is there's essentially some type of rewardthat occurs right after a response or a
behavior. And this procedure allows theorganism to discriminate what is tuberculosis and what

(17:33):
is not, what is a landmineand what is not, and they simply
train based on that and reward basedon that. So set another way,
this is a simple do a thingwhen you smell this disease, and you'll
get a reward. And that's thecontract that they set up with the rat.
That's all it is. You dothis, you get a reward when
you smell this thing. When youdon't smell this thing, if you do
this, there's no reward. Soon and so forth. Yes, and

(17:56):
the rats must be able to doa few things in this training. I
mean, that's the gist of thetraining is you just summarize it. But
that means that they need to learnto do a few things. First,
they must learn that they need todo something special when they smell a thing,
in this case a tuberculosis infected sample. The second is they need to
do something else if they smell anythingother than the target, the infected sample.

(18:19):
The third thing is they learned somethingspecial that they need to do so
that we can tell when they havedetected something. Just saying this. Another
way is those like you're going tonotice something different in your environment when you
do that. You need to dothis one specific action and don't do it
at the times that you don't smellit, and only do it at the
times when you do makes sense.So to train the rats, the researchers

(18:41):
would first get the rats to respondto an auditory queue that they earned a
food reward for. So like whenthey would hear this auditory queue, which
was usually a click, the personwould make the click sound and immediately give
the rat a small mouthful of bananamash. Apparently rats love banana mash.
Yep. I mean I've seen eatlike slice of pizza, so banana mashes

(19:03):
is much healthier. And they feedthem with large plastic syringes so they don't
mama birden, So don't worry.They don't do anything like that. Like
I could you imagine that researcher itdoes that though, it's like, oh,
good job, well, and itdoes that, so they do that.
It's in this click sound. It'sclicker training essentially. Yeah, and
I made the click with my mouth. But it's just like a little metal
thing that like like it looks almostlook like a can topy just sort of
makes a click sound like that.It sounds like the dice bubble from Trouble.

(19:26):
It does. Yeah, the dicebubble from Trouble is basically the click
sound that they used to try.And they just get off the board game
and they set it up and everytime the rat goes yeah, it's a
click in a rattle. And thenand then they send somebody home yep,
and the rat runs over to takea nibbla out of a syringe that's filled
with yellow mush love it. Soonce the rat is reliably running for food

(19:47):
when they hear the click, thenthe researchers then can train the rats to
perform an action that will then resultin the click plus food. So basically
they kind of will start to waittill the rat is moving toward or starting
to do the thing they want,and any approximation of what that should look
like, and as soon as theydo click, and then they get more
and more precise about it, sothey'll stop accepting variations of that action and

(20:08):
only more precise versions of it thatare exactly what it should look like.
In some arrangements of this tuberculosis situation, the rats must start clawing at a
target, so basically the smell ofthing, they claw at something else to
indicate I smell the thing you wantme to smell. In other arrangements,
the rats are trained to simply pause, so they will either smell target and

(20:29):
move on, or they'll smell targetand then they'll hang there for a moment
until the researcher basically you clicks responseand then they get to move on,
right, And so then the researchersgather samples of TB infected and non infected
spit and put it in an arrayso that all the samples look the same
and they are in containers that lookthe same kind of essentially like that,
and they teach the rats to performwhichever action they chose only when they smell

(20:52):
infected samples through repeated trials, providingfood only when the rat does the action
that we talked about in response tothe did sample and at no other time.
So the rat is clawing only clausein the presence of the TB slide
or the TB sample, and notanywhere else. And in this way the
rat will learn both that reacting tothe sample will earn a reward, but

(21:15):
also that They only get the rewardif they react to a specific type of
sample. So they can do thesame thing across every sample, but they're
not going to get it unless theyrespond to specific examples at specific times.
Yes, this means that the ratis actually learning to react to the smell
of the sample, but no otherfeatures of it. Right, because let's
say that the spit had some amountof food in it, or something that

(21:37):
the person had drank, or somethingthat was unique to their DNA and biology.
The rat's got to be able tofilter all that out and it's only
going to say, this is thesmell that I need to pay attention to.
The Other ones aren't important for megetting my banana mash right now?
Does that make sense? Yeah?Absolutely makes perfect sense. And so once
trained, then the rats can identifydozens of these samples in minutes. They
just cruise through them, super wick, able to just say smell yeah,

(22:02):
smell no, smell no, smellyesh, smell no, and like a
binary ones and Zero's machine, theyjust crank out tons of samples super fast,
really efficient. Wild. I mean, so in these training examples that
we're talking about, the rats havebeen eighty five to one hundred percent accurate
as compared to lab tests. Sokeep this in mind. We talked earlier
that lab tests are anywhere between twentyand at the highest sixty percent. So

(22:26):
already a rat is it's more accuratethan a microscope test. And they're almost
perfect, yeah, which is amazing. They can be, they can be,
and so like further, they detectedsamples that the lab missed and later
confirmed as affected, so even better, they're like, no, no,
no, you messed up. I'ma rat. You're a human, you
dumb human. Here's how I'm goingto fix this for you. As you
may have sort of picked up,this means obviously that tuberculosis itself has some

(22:49):
specific smell, and I didn't botherlooking up the compounds. Maybe some of
you out there are like big onolfactory compounds and you'd be like, I
know what that is, and great, right in, let us know.
But what's important to know about thisis that tuberculosis actually, like it does,
have apparently a pungent enough odor thatif the infection is powerfully concentrated enough,
even humans can detect it. Andapparently even the word tuberculosis, at

(23:12):
least part of that word, orsome version of that word in other languages
has to do with the smell thatlike doctors who are especially trained can start
to pick up on the people whoare like severely infected, yeah, with
that disease. And rats already havesuch a powerful nose that they're going to
detect things that are way below ahumans threshold to detect, and so this

(23:33):
is a kind of easy task forthem. They're like, it's basically like
you to go around pointing to thingand say car not car, and like
humans can do that very easily,right, Obviously rats can learn to do
that too, but they're just doingit with their nose because we can't see
as easily in the samples what's different. But the smell apparently is very easy
for them to pick up on.Interesting. Okay, that's good to know,
right, I don't want to smellit, but that's great that they

(23:56):
can. Yeah, I also thinkthat I'm going to keep my distance as
far as I can. Absolutely,I will say really quick as before we
transition onto the next thing. Ingrad school, I was required to get
like annual TB tests, and Iremember thinking, like, does anybody have
tubercules? Like why are we doingthis? Is this disease that common.
I had no idea it was ascommon as it is. That's wild.
You know, I've not had todo a TV test here in Florida,

(24:18):
but I know like in some stateslike California, it's required to provide health
services. Yeah, Florida loves disease. They're They're like, yeah, they
put they put one in office.He's a governor. But that was good.
Now, that's that's essentially sort ofthe gist of the cool stuff about
rats and tuberculosis and how rats detecttuberculosis. I mean, obviously not cool

(24:40):
stuff about tuberculosis. That disease sucks, but there's actually even more cool stuff
to talk about. Now before wetalk about those, I've kind of wondered,
do we get paid more if wedon't let you know that ads are
coming? Let's find out. Ohshoot. So rats detecting disease is one

(25:04):
thing, one example of rats beingheroes, but there are lots and lots
of examples of rats being these reallycool creatures. And as we mentioned earlier,
there are lots of rats that candetect land mines and many parts of
the world that have suffered wars overthe last century and its continuous war and
civil war and all that stuff.Many armies seeded marching planes with mines,

(25:25):
so the enemy troops traveling the areawould explode upon contact with those mines.
They're very dangerous and often forgotten.The minds are sensitive to a relatively small
amount of weight on the trigger.And again they are in places now that
are densely populated and completely forgotten outof wartime, and so as a result,
these areas can become incredibly dangerous.Yeah, and exactly that, because

(25:48):
most armies really have not felt obligatedto retrieve the minds once the war ends,
so fields may have these active landmines laying dormant for decades, and
these can often be out in areasthat are but as you said, the
urban sprawl can creep into these areas, and we're talking civilians, children,
hikers, sort of everyday people.Soldiers can be in there too. And

(26:08):
then just animals strained through peaceful meadowsor wherever that find their lives suddenly cut
short or their limbs spontaneously amputated whenthey encounter a random mind left recklessly decades
earlier, which is another point forwhy rats are cooler than humans. But
obviously The clean up is expensive.It's time consuming and extremely dangerous and quite

(26:30):
difficult because there's no way to pinpointexactly where every single land mine was ever
buried ever without getting blown up orlike dangerously close to being blown up.
Yeah right, I mean unless landmines now have GPS is on them,
but I don't think that they woulddo that for like military strategy. But
rats are far too small to detonateany of these mines. There's not enough

(26:51):
weight in these rats to land ona mine and then goodbye. Their superlative
power of smell allows them to detectburied mindes with remarkable accuracy. So not
only do they detect disease, theycan find these straight land mines. I
would highly recommend that you look upsome videos on this because it is adorable.
You can watch these videos online.Once trained, the experimentals will take

(27:14):
rats out into these fields that arebelieved to be contaminated with mines, and
they'll basically let the rats go ona little leash. I mean, you
can imagine they could just like letthem go but for the purposes of trying
to like actually find the mines,and the rat now get distracted and went
off they're on these little leashes,which is very cute, and they're unlike
a little harness, and the ratsjust scurry around looking for mines out in
these fields. Yeah, and soonce they're detected, the mouse or the

(27:37):
rat does its little jig and thenit runs back to the researcher for a
banana snack, which I love.Hey, I found this thing, and
then they go to get a banana, and then the researchers plant flags and
get land mine detecting equipment to confirmthe mind and can then get a bomb
removal team to come in disarm andremove the mine. Yes, even though
they still do use the excavation teamsand the mind detection equipment, it's way

(28:00):
more efficient for them to have atargeted place to search than to try and
sweep an entire field. The mindsweeping game is much easier to do than
mind sweeping a mine field. Yeahfor real. Yeah, and so it's
expensive, it's time consuming, andthis way they can have really targeted like
these are the places we need toreally look and be reasonably sure that they're
not going to encounter any minds thatwe're missed by the rats along the way,

(28:22):
Because the rats are so good atthis activity. Really, the truth
is too like when you start thinkingabout this, these creatures are so smart
and the training itself is essentially thesame thing as the TV spit samples.
What they do is they teach therats to perform an action to earn food,
then teach them to perform those actionsin the response to a specific smell
which is going to be the explosiveor some kind of active ingredient in the
landmine. Yep, so very coolstuff. These heroic rats are helping to

(28:48):
identify disease in people that otherwise mightnot be detected, way more efficiently and
way cheaper than doing the other testingway, and then help save some people's
lives because they can get them ona course of treatment that before it gets
too bad, and they can goout into these fields detect land mines all
day and prevent people from being needlesslyexploded by these recklessly left mines. So

(29:10):
pretty happy with these rats so far. I feel like I already love rats.
But I guess there's a question isthere anything else that they do that
couldn't endear them more to us?In fact, there is, of course
there is, yes, Because ofcourse there is so This is another amazing
thing. They also train rats todetect humans who have been trapped under rubble
from a collapsed structure, such asfrom like an earthquake or something. Yeah,

(29:33):
earthquakes, terrorist attacks, general wear, and terror buildings, many other
phenomenon that cause large buildings, bridges, or other human made structures to collapse
before people have had a chance toescape. These are examples of like disasters
to happen where they can bring ratsin and be helpful for search rescue teams.
And now this part this is reallyimportant because finding survivors and a building
that has collapsed is extremely time sensitive. You don't have time to like wander

(29:57):
around looking and see maybe you'll runinto someone if you're lucky. The tragedy
of these collapses is how often victimsare feet or even inches sometimes from rescue,
but could not be found in timeto save them because they're obscured by
all the all the stuff that's that'shiding them. There. There's a lot
going on. There's often smoke anddebris, and you just like they're right

(30:18):
there, and even if not,they might be way back under the rubble,
but like all the more reason tolike try and as efficiently as possible
pinpoint where they are so that rescueefforts can be devoted to finding them and
extracting them from that dangerous situation.Absolutely so, rats, again, with
their incredible sense of smell, theirability to squeezing the small spaces, and
their trainability, can learn to findpeople trapped in rubble for handlers to do

(30:41):
then direct extraction teams. So again, it's not necessarily that the rats are
dragging people out of the rubble.That's not what they're doing. But they're
going, hey, over here,like over here, and that's kind of
what they're doing, and that initself is enough to save lives. Yeah,
and of course they would use dogsfor something like this, but rats
have some really key advantages in thisparticular case, even beyond the smell.

(31:02):
One is that they're very small,so they can get through small spaces.
They're agile, they're fast, they'relight, and they're likely to be able
to get through all those little nooksand crannies, and they're too light to
risk causing further collapse. You canimagine if you're trying to dig through it,
you might accidentally push something out ofthe way that was holding up a
structure that then collapses further. Therats aren't going to do that. They're
just going to squeeze through barely,making as almost as if they're not there.

(31:23):
They're like little furry ghosts that canpass through everything very easily. It's
kind of what they do, right. So, unlike finding landmines though,
or smelling spit samples, the ratisn't easily observed when it enters the rubble,
and when it comes out you can'teasily know if it's found anything.
So these rats are equipped with adorablelittle vests with three D printed housing and
casing, a video camera so thehandler can watch a live feed of the

(31:47):
rat working through the rubble, andthus the handler identifies when there is a
person trap, so the rat canjust go look and search for the smell
and then have somebody kind of beinga second set of eyes for them.
It's wonderful. Yeah, And they'renot ending around, they're like legitimately they
hone in on the smell of aperson and then they go to them.
Now, this, as far asI could tell, this is fairly recent,

(32:08):
Like this is the kind of researchthat's only been sorta like the landline
stuff has been happening for some time. Tuberculosis stuff is a little bit more
recent. This I think is themost recent the way that they've decided to
train rats to help people. Andso as far as I can tell,
this has only actually been implemented inmock sort of lab settings with simulated disasters

(32:28):
staged. So it like they putout the rubble and they like hide stuff
in it, and so that's thatkind of where they're at with the training
right now. Now they've been workingon increasing the complexity of the training because
they need it to it. Yougotta imagine the rats going out there.
They're not going into the sterile,clean, well organized rubble. It's going
to be chaos. And not onlyis there gonna be chaos, but there's
going to be a ton of distraction. There's going to be people yelling right,

(32:52):
There's probably gonna be sirens, drilling, there might be water or smoke.
There's gonna be all kinds of eternalstimulate that's going to make it way
more difficult and terrifying was poor littlerat that they're going to encounter if they
were actually traversing the dynamic situation suchas a collapse building from an earthquake.
So they're working on that level oftraining still, it's just it takes a

(33:15):
bit more time because there's so manythings a rat has to be prepared to
encounter. They can't just put itin a little cage and have it like
go find someone. It's got tobe in a situation that's very intense,
right, So in the training scenariosthey tested rats finding a few things.
They found people clothes, plastic bagswith clothes, and the rats successfully found
people eighty three percent of the time, So again super effective in what they're

(33:37):
doing, and much better at likeother things that might just be like sift
through rubble and find person, tryand listen for someone calling out, and
the other thing that they did inthese experiments that was cool as they got
them to detect the difference between peoplewho were alive and people who were deceased.
They were they were able to honein really only primarily on the people
who were alive, and they werepretty good about doing at and that allows

(34:00):
them Again it's like it's not thatwe don't want to extract the bodies of
the people who are deceased, butlike the critical thing is the people who
are still alive who need help now, and they might be unconscious or they
may be in a position with forwhatever reason, they can't cry out,
and so it's imperative that the ratis able to sort of get in there.
They focus in on their pinpoint,they sort of make a bee line

(34:21):
to person buried under rubble, andthen the person who's watching the camera can
see there's where we need to gohead there right now, and they can
sort of work on their extraction ina pinpointed way that's way more efficient,
way more effective, way more likelyto save people's lives. I mean,
again, another reason why you shouldlove rats. Yes, And I can't
stress enough it's so adorable to like, look at these videos of these rats.

(34:44):
They're like, yeah, they're alldressed up in their like military disaster
gear and their little vests and allthat, and it's just and you look
at them and you're like, Iwant one of those. So I think
maybe you have the temptation to getone of those rats, but I think
if you're going to spend them moneyon it, donate it to the organizations
that are doing this amazing, amazingwork so that they can keep doing what

(35:04):
they're doing. And they can feedthe rats, they can give them swanky
iPads and all that sort of thingand keep the system working so that lives
can be saved. I really likethe idea that there's like a manufacturing plant
somewhere that got like an order fortiny vests and they were like, what
the hell is this like because theyprobably couldn't disclose what the research was,
and they were like, we gotto train rats to wear vests, but
we need somebody to like manufacture these. Yeah, exactly. I love that

(35:25):
so much. Yeah, it's prettygreat, all right. So, yeah,
as I said, that's kind ofa shorter one. That's what we
have to say. I think forme, maintake home here is just that,
first of all, it's amazing thatwe can do this work. It's
amazing that humans figured out a wayto leverage other animals. And the way
they do it is the sort ofcooperative relationship. The rats do get something

(35:45):
out of this. It has tobe voluntary engagement, and so they do
it because they get to earn afood reward. And the people really celebrate
these rats. They're really they lovethe fact that these rats are so helpful
and so good, and so thereare a lot of experiments around the world
that use animals in this way andthey have to euthanize them afterward, and
I didn't I didn't think to checkon that for this for and researching this

(36:06):
topic. I really hope they're noteuthanizing these rats when they're done saving a
bunch of people's lives, right,Hopefully they get to live out their lives
in like a cushy little cage wherethey you know, or large arena where
they can sort of run around andget all the food that they want and
be fat and happy. I'm notsure. I mean, the rules and
regulations are probably different in Tanzania andother countries, but I hope that they
treat them humanely when they've sort ofat the end of their service that they

(36:28):
didn't really sign up for. Butthey do get treated well while while they're
there. What one hundred percent,if a rat retires from bomb sniffing or
tuberculosis smelling or rubble exploring, Iwill adopt it. Indeed. Yeah,
reach out to us for the exmilitary bomb sniffing rats for the Popo group.
Yeah, send them to the vegans. Yeah exactly, We'll hang out

(36:50):
with them. It'd be cool.Yeah, it'd be great. I think
my big takeaway is just like thisis another example of how behavior science is
super powerful and how it can behelpful, and how it can be simple,
like doesn't need to be some likereally like stated the art technology.
Maybe that will be helpful later andcontinue to do that, but like,
the behavior science exists now, andit's powerful, and it's far more effective
than some of the things that arebeing done already. So there's no reason

(37:14):
why we shouldn't consider this as apossible option, if not an effective option,
for life saving assessments or life savingthings. I mean, I think
it's just a pretty incredible from thatregard. That's actually a really good point,
And so I'm going to piggyback onthat just a little bit because,
just as you said, one ofthe reasons this is so important is because
a lot of these countries they can'tafford some of the high tech stuff.

(37:36):
And like, maybe high tech stuffwill come down the road, maybe some
super philanthropist will donate a lot ofthat to these people, But in the
meantime, they have a tool attheir disposal that is the most accurate,
cheapest thing that they can have,and it's easy to use and it's efficient.
It's mad efficient, Like they're sogood at what they do so quickly,
and like they work for actual peanuts, I mean banana mash. But

(37:57):
you know what I'm saying, right, it's just the coolest thing, like
just so like love to celebrate thefact that this is even a thing that
exists and that I think is oneof those solutions that actually is very meaningful
for people who don't have the sortof financial income or the resources to do
any other way. And honestly,like they kind of don't need you right
now, right exactly exactly. Allright, Well, we should definitely give
some recommendations, but I would liketo say that this episode is brought to

(38:21):
you by the sweat, tears andhard work done by the why we do
what we do crew. But let'sgive credit to the advertisers. All right,
we've been talking about rats, We'vebeen talking about tuberculosis and landmines and
collapsed buildings. Let's talk about recommendations. Yes, let's do it. Recommendations.

(38:52):
I am recommending an album. It'skind of old now, it's man
coming up on twenty years old.Oh my god, I know this is
a band called say Us. Ithink it was their second album, maybe
the first full length. It wasself titled to just called say Usin and
man, I just I've been listeningto this album a lot lately. It
came out in two thousand and six. But is just is just gold the
whole thing from top to bottom.It's fantastic. Really enjoy it. So

(39:14):
you can probably find it out thereon all streaming services. Go look out
for say Usin S A O SI N if you're interested in it.
I just really love this album.Good rock album, just awesome melodies,
awesome harmonies, all kinds of goodstuff. Yeah, super interesting. This
isn't it is just the one afterAnthony Green left? Or is this the
one with Anthony Green? It's afterhe left and before he came back,

(39:35):
right right, you're right, Iforgot there is like a brief period where
he was back to Yeah. Yeah, great band, super super interesting musicality
and stuff. I love it.Yeah. Yeah, they're they're they're weird,
but they're great. The good drummerreally good. Yes, yeah.
Yeah. So mine is the fifthbook in a series of books that is
just a wild Time and the bookis Heretics of Dune, which is the
fifth book out of the original Dudeseries, which is made of six books

(39:59):
from Frank Herber and then two froma son that were supposed to be like
the ends equal. But okay,well, I would say, like,
read start with Doune obviously, becauseby the time you get to this one,
you are nearly five thousand years inthe future, a worm god has
died, and now there are sexswitches that are trying to take over the
universe with their vaginas. It's awild time. It's a wild there's clones,

(40:23):
there's it's a whole thing. Excellentwild time, wonderful story, super
interesting philosophy. I just I waslike, you are recommending this, right,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'mone other recommending this. I would
say, though, you just haveto you have to be ready to dive
into a world that is just youhave to accept it, is what I'm
saying. Do you need to readthe first four books before you get to

(40:45):
this one? Yeah, yeah,yeah, you need to read the first
four books because it's just none ofit will make sense. It will arguably
not make sense when you get intothe fifth book. When you get there,
but it is a great and interestingand very unique Uni Verse for sci
fi like there's nothing like it,fun and super cool. It makes me
want to like eat the spice melangebecause it all apparently smells like cinnamon.

(41:07):
Okay, deal, Yeah, it'sgreat. That's awesome. I love that
all right, Kay? Yeah,we finished this kind of efficiently. Hope
you enjoyed our path down Hero ratsAli. I don't know what's called that,
but it was. It's been fun, at least for me. Yeah,
it's great. If you liked thisepisode and you would like to support
us, as I said, youcan join us on patren. If you
do, you get all kinds ofbonus stuff. And actually we're running a

(41:27):
campaign. If we get extra people, or if we get up to fifteen
people, then we'll do a virtualhangout with y'all. You can ask us
questions. We'll just sort of chatand have fun and you'll be light and
casual and all that sort of thing. Trying to get that by June or
sometime in June. So hang onover and sign up at whatever level makes
sense for you, and we'll bethrilled about that outcome. And in addition
to that, if you have otherideas you'd like to see available as a

(41:51):
perk for joining patron let us know, like we're open to suggestions on that.
Patren supporters talk about you in asecond. Yeah, you sortainly can
do that thing too, and I'llpost that there was all fun stuff over
there. We also have some merchfor sale. I don't know people who
like to buy podcast merch. Ihave bought podcast merch, so maybe you're
one of those people. And ifyou are into that sort of thing.
We've got some good stuff over onour website. It doesn't just have our
name on all of it either,some of it does, but you knows

(42:13):
all the things that it says.We've got shirts and hoodies and beanies and
coffee mugs and water bottles and allkinds of good stuff over there, so
you can have virtu our website.You can also find more about our episodes
by going there, although a littlebehind them posting all of the episodes that
you can find a bunch of information. Yeah, we'll get there. Yeah.
Yeah. In addition, you canalso just leaving reading interview, subscribe
to a friend. All that goodstuff. And for all the people who

(42:34):
have already supported us on Patreon,we thank you so much. I'd like
to say thank you to Mike mMegan, Layla, Mike T, Justin,
Kim, Joshua, The Daily BA, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia and
Brian. Thank you guys so much. You're the best and we really appreciate
you. Yes, you rule,you're the best ever. Of course,
thank you for listening. Everyone who'sout there, we probably would speak to
an open, empty arena of nobody's, but still we're more happy that you

(42:58):
are there with us on this journey. If you like to tell us anything
about hero Rats or about the Duneseries or rock bands from the early aughts
that you're interested in, or landminesor tuberculosis or collapsed buildings, you should
definitely email us. You can reachus at info at WWDWWD podcast dot com.
Audio production, mixing and all ofthe good audio stuff that you hear
is courtesy of Justin. Our writersand fact checkers are Jess, Shane and

(43:22):
myself, And thank you so muchfor recording with me today. Shane always
as a rare evening recording for us. Yeah, No, it's fun.
Is there anything that I missed oranything you'd like to add before we wrap
up? No, just thank youall for being here and we look forward
to the next like one thousand episodesof order to keep doing indeed all right
perfect. Then this is Abraham andthis is Shane. We're out. See
up. You've been listening to WhyWe Do What We Do. You can

(43:45):
learn more about this and other episodesby going to WWDWWD podcast dot com.
Thanks for listening, and we hopeyou have an awesome day