
The Dogs That Sniff Out Land Mines - ryan_j_naughton
http://modernfarmer.com/2014/06/dogs-sniff-land-mines/
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ryanwhitney
Also see: APOPO, a Belgian organization training rats to detect landmines and
tuberculosis.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APOPO](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APOPO) &
[http://apopo.org](http://apopo.org)

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disputin
Yes. Rats are cheaper to train, and light enough that they don't set off the
mines.

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sukuriant
There's a lot of really cool information here, especially for animal lovers.
From the technical side of things, though, one part stood out: the dogs are
more effective at finding mines? That's not something I exactly expected;
though I suppose it makes sense. Dogs and their nose, like humans and their
eyes are great pattern matchers. Humans are great at seeing and recognizing
faces, and specific faces to a degree, better than humans, at least
historically (we have put a lot of research into face recognition). I suppose
the reason that dogs are so good at this is a similar reason.

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richardwigley
There a smell from the explosives - it's quicker to cover an area for the
smell-ee than with a metal detector. \------ "After a few months underground,
almost all landmines leak vapours that betray the presence of explosives."

[http://www.economist.com/news/technology-
quarterly/21603239-...](http://www.economist.com/news/technology-
quarterly/21603239-clearing-landmines-despite-sophisticated-new-technology-
many-explosive-devices-are)

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sukuriant
Indeed, and it's awesome. It's just impressive that we can detect that odor
better with dogs than with some sort of engineered odor detector

