The cost to train a rat is 6,000 euros ($7,700), roughly a third of what it costs to train a dog. Where dogs need expansive kennel facilities and regular veterinary care because of African climates, APOPO's kennel facilities at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro, Tanzania, can house up to 300 rats. The rats see a single vet once a week and are much easier to transport than dogs, Weetjens said.
Training begins with socialization when the rats are 4 weeks old because "it's really important they learn man are friends," Weetjens said.
A system of Pavlovian conditioning follows. Trainers teach the rodents to associate a clicking noise with something tasty: a banana or peanuts. The same treats are used to teach them how to signal when they find a mine and how to detect the scent of TNT in tea balls.
The final phase before they're shipped to Mozambique for accreditation includes several trial runs in APOPO's training minefields, some of which contain tea balls, others live mines.
Nailing down the regimen was tricky. At one point in APOPO's early days, the rats performed perfectly in trials, making Weetjens suspicious. It turned out the rats were outsmarting the humans.
"They knew which samples had been touched by the trainers," he said. "We have to remain extremely vigilant not to bring in additional cues that help the animal find out what the rewarding samples are."
It hasn't been easy convincing the international community that mine-sniffing rats are viable, but donors are coming around. A partners list once consisting solely of Antwerp University and the Belgian government now includes about 30 groups, including the U.N. Development Program, World Bank Development Marketplace and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.
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