Giant rats with custom-made vests could be deployed in ports to sniff out smuggled wildlife
African giant pouched rats are using their keen sense of smell to fight crime.
In short:
Researchers trained 11 rats to sniff out elephant tusk and rhino horn, even when smugglers used common tricks such as using coffee grinds and washing powder to conceal their scents.
By the end of the training, eight rats were able to correctly identify four commonly smuggled wildlife species.
What's next?
Scientists say the next step is to fit them with custom-made vests and deploy the animals at ports to detect smuggled wildlife.
Meet Kirsty, Betty and Desmond.
They are giant African pouch rats; an animal that has a sense of smell likened to sniffer dogs at airports.
They, and eight of their colleagues, have spent the past few years learning how to bust the illegal wildlife trade.
Rats have been used by the same researchers to sniff out other targets in the past.
Duke University researcher Kate Webb led their high-level training.
"Rats, like other rodents, have an excellent sense of smell and therefore are great for scent-detection tasks," she said.
Dr Webb, through Belgian and US not-for-profit organisation APOPO, said she and her team had successfully taught eight out of 11 rats how to sniff out pangolin scales, elephant ivory, rhino horn and African blackwood.
"Pangolin, which was the first wildlife target the rats were introduced to, is the world's most widely trafficked animal," Dr Webb said.
"We were guided by two main factors in our choice of species: species that are commonly trafficked globally and more specifically out of East Africa, and what species we were able to obtain materials from in order to train the rats."
Pangolin scales are often used in traditional medicine, and are often smuggled through wildlife dealers.
Pitched as a "low-tech" solution to disrupting animal smuggling, it is an extension of the work the same researchers began in 2016, using the rats to sniff out explosives and a tuberculosis-causing pathogen.
"APOPO has successfully trained these rats to help address global issues … and felt the rats could potentially make a difference in fighting against the illegal wildlife trade," Dr Webb said.
She said the rats were low-cost and had a significantly longer life span than other rats, at up to 11 years.
"Their light weight makes it possible to lift them to higher locations for screening which, for wildlife detection, allows access to, for example, ventilation systems of shipping containers," Dr Webb said.
How does it work?
The rats were first taught how to indicate a target scent.
Researchers taught them to hold their noses for several seconds in a hole, where a target scent was placed.
Target scents could be anything frequently transported by animal smugglers, including elephant ivory and rhino horn.
Every time they successfully performed a "nose poke", they were given a flavoured pellet.
Researchers said the rats would be able to get into smaller spaces than sniffer dogs.
The rats were then introduced to non-target scents such as coffee beans, washing powder and electric cables.
"Traffickers always come up with new materials to conceal their contraband," Dr Webb said.
"This could be either strong-smelling items in order to conceal the wildlife, or items which can be used to conceal wildlife and contraband from visual detection such as X-ray machines."
Dr Webb said there were even highly organised crime syndicates that would have their own detection dogs as a way to "proof" their concealment methods.
"Teaching rats to detect wildlife even within such complex mixtures requires training," she said.
"They need to learn that if the so-called 'bouquet' of scent that matches their target is present, even amongst other scents, they should signal this."
Dr Webb said it was a process of "discrimination", where the rats would learn to only signal the smells of the wildlife targets and ignore 146 other "non-target" substances.
By the end of the training, eight rats successfully identified four commonly smuggled wildlife species.
Are sniffer rats the future?
The research comes at a critical time for Australia. There has been a sharp spike in the number of trafficked animals detected by authorities this year.
More than 800 animals have been seized in the past 18 months in Australia alone and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's (UNODC) new World Wildlife Crime Report recently found international "wildlife trafficking overall has not been substantially reduced over two decades".
Researchers said existing screening tools were expensive and time intensive, while rats were a low-cost and effective alternative.
"We don't envision the rats to replace existing solutions, but rather complement them," Dr Webb said.
"We think that by adding a specialised tool such as rats, this can free up time for other solutions to focus these on the specific areas they are best suited to.
"For example, you could envision detection dogs screening vast open areas or tracking poachers while rats screen container contents or specific packages."
Getting in the field
Researchers said the next step was deploying the rats in the field.
"We have already conducted operational trials at the Dar es Salaam seaport and rats performed extremely well," Dr Webb said.
"This was a huge next stage to ensure that rats can operate in these noisy, smelly, and busy environments.
"Other next steps include also developing frameworks in cooperation with governments so that busts made by rats can be used as evidence in courts, for example."
Moving forward, researchers said they had built the rats a purpose-built vest to start scaling up their training.
While there are currently limitations to the study, researchers are hoping to put their findings into action.
The rats will be able to pull a small ball attached at the centre of their vest with their front paws to emit a beeping sound, to communicate with their trainers.
The sound will alert handlers when they detect a target.
"Ultimately, this vest will also allow us to move to the next stage of using a customised backpack that has an integrated video camera," Dr Webb said.
The study was peer reviewed by "relevant independent experts" and published in the Frontiers in Conservation Science journal.
By：ABC(责任编辑：admin)
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