Lola, queen of the bomb-sniffing rats :
"At about 220 grams Lola is too light to detonate landmines that guerillas set to protect crops used to make cocaine, which they sell to fund their four-decade-old revolution. It takes about 400 grams to detonate a mine."
I saw this a couple of days back and it comes down to what is "blogworthy" on the day. I thought it was a great piece of lateral thinking and a productive use of all that insane training of animals that scientists do. Rats running mazes, rats pressing doors and bells. This is useful training and boy, is little Lola an asset to humanity! We always think of rats as disgusting and evil but if their rodent habits, their keen noses, their persistence and their trainability can perform this sort of human service, then I think we need to look at them differently. Maybe they can be trained for less dangerous things too. I think it's great to train a rat to catch a rat!
No comments:
Post a Comment