Rats use GPS to root out land mines
June 8, 2012
Associate Professor of Psychology Kevin Myers holds a rat in his lab at Bucknell (credit: Bucknell University)
Two Bucknell University professors are working with a U.S. Department of Defense contractor to develop faster and more sophisticated technology and methods to detect land mines. The team has devised a system to train rats to recognize and respond to the explosives.
The rats will be outfitted with miniature backpacks and wireless transmitters that track their positions and movements. During the first part of their training, the rats learn to associate a mild buzz in the backpack — much like the “vibrate” setting in a cell phone — with getting a food reward. Eventually, the buzz itself acts as a reward that may be triggered when the rats complete certain tasks.
In the next phase of training, the rats are prompted to sniff various odors and are rewarded for doing something specific in response, such as turning to the left rather than the right, when the land mine odor is present. Eventually, the rats learn to behave more distinctively when they detect that odor.
“Because the rat associates the buzzer with food, you can use it to reward the rat for initiating some kind of action,” Associate Professor of Psychology Kevin Myers said. “We chose to teach them to turn in circles because that is not something they would do spontaneously. And it’s easy to detect when they’re doing it with a couple of motion sensors in the backpack.”
The wireless transmitter also enables the trainers to communicate with the rats in the field.
The U.S. Army Research Office has awarded Coherent Technical Services Inc. and Bucknell $100,000 for Phase I of the project.
Comments (14)
by Jeff dorazio
…okay folks…I’ll detonate them myself but only if you outfit me with a tiny back pack and wireless transmitter…
by David U
Future rats may be trained with tiny little jet packs.
by Bri
I don’t know who is more pleased to have there picture taken! The guy, or the rat ! It’s pinky and the brain. Though which one one is pinky and which one is the Brain I can’t decide!
by Kaiser
Pardon grammatical errors :)
by Kaiser
The research itself with be valuable. I personally cannot see letting a pile of rats loose in a minefield as producing effective results. I guess we’ll find out.
I can understand some protests against using animals of higher intellectual capacity in experiments (I suppose some of you are aware of the experiment the Russians did – separating a dogs head completely from its body to see how long it could be kept alive ?) I believe that those conducting such experiments in the present attempt to make scientific/experiments procedures as painless as possible for the animal.
Guess what. There are thousands of individuals – around the world – that are suffering from what they consider a sort of artificially induced schizophrenia. That is, they believe that they are being targeted remotely through the use of some technology that manipulates their behaviour via conduction of voices into their heads. I believe a percentage of these individuals are not crazy and speaking the truth. They tend to blame the US government for the most part. I (being Canadian) hope this is not the case and find it discouraging. I have had light conversations with Dr. Michael Persinger and Dr. Nick Begich on such activity. They refuse to refute the possibility, yet are essentially helpless in what they can do. To their credit, they have maintained open minds and are willing to discuss such exotic sounding possibilities/problems. Most experts simply assume the bio/chem model and discard these people – ‘tin-foil hat’ group of conspiracy lunatics.
I follow Ray due to the fact he has conducted plenty of work on helping those with physical disabilities (a very noble act). I personally look forward to the future evolution of ‘cognitive’ technologies as they progressively become reality (BCI etc). It could very well help this small minority of ‘artificially schizophrenic’ individuals find some answers – and possible solutions – to the affliction they face.
Interesting stuff Raymond. Keep it up.
by Stephen Mc Elrath
Very interesting, especially if one reads the original Bucknell article and comments. Possibly the Army could develop a laser guided system to detonate the ordinance after the rats locate them on a grid. Or a swarm of small disposable robots could be used to detonate the mines in place. There is always more to learn from the byproducts of these experiments and if it will save lives, it is $$ well spent.
by Arctic Poppy
This takes Ben to a whole new level.
by melajara
Yes, it’s more ethical to put humans on the field to clean it.
If you don’t agree, I’ll ask
Who put those mines on the field? Definitely not rats
Who sold the mines to the enemy? Another kind of rats for sure!
by Laure Anne Hill
APOPO HeroRATs has been using giant pouched African rats for years to find buried landmines. The rats are three feet long (nose to tip of tail) and still too lightweight to set off a mine. The APOPO approach is very low tech, which means low cost and affordable in poor countries. A Buddhist monk designed and oversees the program. In 2010, 70% of land mine casualties were civilians and 25% were children. HeroRATs help with humanitarian demining, not with military demining — an important distinction. An innocent child should not have to grow up minus both arms.
It sounds like U.S. scientists want to take the sniffing rat idea to the next level. I hope they keep the rats’ welfare in mind during the process. For example, HeroRATs use rats local to their area, animals acclimated to the weather conditions and bacterial flora. This puts less stress on the little guys. (From author Laurel Anne Hill, moderator of the Minds Clearing Land Mines WordPress blog.)
by Peter Simmons
Seriously though, do you think hominids have the right to do anything they like to any other species just because they are more powerful? Sounds like a fascist attitude to me, but then warmongers usually are. Yes, it would be much more humane to send humans, after all humans invented the perverted things, so perhaps they should learn how to disable them. Using dogs is an even worse crime, since they are so much more intelligent than rats and already give so much to our species. Kevin Myers looks like the sort of person I wouldn’t trust my dog with, or my children come to that. Does evil show in a person’s face? To me it says ‘psychopath’.
by Helio Perroni Filho
“Seriously though, do you think hominids have the right to do anything they like to any other species just because they are more powerful? Sounds like a fascist attitude to me, but then warmongers usually are. ”
If I have to send a living being into a dangerous situation and I can choose between:
1. A human
2. A rat
All else being equal, I’ll send the rat every day. If that makes me a Fascist, then bring me my black shirt.
“Yes, it would be much more humane to send humans, after all humans invented the perverted things, so perhaps they should learn how to disable them.”
I’d love to live in the same world as you, that one where the human who invented mines, the one who puts them to use, and the one who disarms / steps on one are the same person. In my world they don’t even know each other, if they live in the same continent at all – so this “retribution” thing doesn’t really work out in my world.
“Using dogs is an even worse crime, since they are so much more intelligent than rats and already give so much to our species. ”
So the more intelligent / collaborative a species is, the worse it is to put it in harm’s way?
Then how come this logic reverses when we get to humans? We’re the most intelligent after all, not to mention that both rats and dogs depend a great deal on us.
by ThePhi
And using bacteria to make beer (or cheese) then killing them, is it fascist?
or even using cows for producing milk only, killing immediately the calves?
I think it’s an example of anthrocentrism you’re showing here.
When one species of wasp lays its eggs inside a caterpillar, the caterpillar being then eaten alive, or when the Toxoplasma infests ant brains to make them eaten by another predators, we don’t question the ‘fascism’ of this.
by Bri
There is a ground dwelling ant in south America, that normally never climbs a tree. A parasitic fungus makes it climb the nearest tree as high as it can. Once there, it bites the tree, and extends it’s body, like a flag. The fungus consumes the ant , while making spores to continue the life cycle. Everything is a parasite on something else.
by Helio Perroni Filho
Cue protests from PETA and the like for risking the poor little rats’ lives – when obviously it would be much more humane to send in people to do that kind of job.
Seriously though, do you think something like this will ever see application? Breeding and training the rats ought to take quite a bit of time, even if it were for something that was a top priority (I hear armies are less than ecstatic about disarming their mine fields).
In the end, it may just be more economic to simply send heavy machinery to step onto the things so they detonate; it’s not like the surroundings of most mine fields aren’t already torn down anyway.