Bart Weetjens is the brain and Buddhist monk behind APOPO (a Dutch acronym meaning Anti-Personnel Land Mines Detection Product Development), which trains HeroRats. He said Mushi's initial repulsion is common.
Prejudice against rats is "deep in our psyche" and has roots in the Middle Ages when the rodents were blamed for the plague, Weetjens said. He quickly cited Black Death's rightful culprit: fleas.
The Belgian-born Weetjens, 43, is an apt candidate to change rats' unsavory image. A self-professed rodent lover, he was given his first hamster, Goldy, for his ninth birthday.
"Fascinated as I was by it, I wanted to have a female hamster. Soon, I had a nest of hamsters," he said. "Mother didn't like that too much, so I took them to the pet shop and they gave me money for those hamsters."
He soon found out pet shops paid even more for rats, and more still for gerbils and squirrels. It wasn't long before Weetjens had a "kind of breeding arrangement in my room" and was selling various rodents for walking-around money.
At 14, he gave up his enterprise when he was sent to boarding school, but he maintained his love for rodents.
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