Animals are proving surprisingly effective in tasks ranging from detecting landmines to installing fiber optic cables, challenging the notion that technology alone holds the answers to complex global problems.
As humanity rapidly advances in robotics and artificial intelligence, some tasks remain more efficiently performed by animals. From African giant rats clearing landmines to ferrets laying cable and dogs detecting cancer, these real-life examples demonstrate nature’s continued superiority in certain situations.
One of the most compelling examples comes from the Belgian NGO APOPO, which trains African giant rats to locate landmines in conflict zones.
According to data from the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, nearly 6,300 people were killed or injured by landmines in 2024, with 90% of the victims being civilians and almost half of them children. This urgent issue is being addressed, in part, by these remarkable animals.
But rats aren’t the only animals contributing. In Derbyshire, England, ferrets are employed for engineering tasks that no equipment humans can accomplish, and dogs trained by organizations like Medical Detection Dogs in the United Kingdom have demonstrated an ability to detect cancer before conventional medical tests.
The HeroRATs: Rats Saving Lives in Minefields
The NGO APOPO, headquartered in Belgium and operating since 1997, utilizes a species of rat known as the African giant pouched rat (Cricetomys gambianus) for humanitarian demining work. These animals, nicknamed HeroRATs, are approximately the size of a small cat and possess cheek pouches, similar to those of a hamster, where they like to store food.
The efficiency of these rats is remarkable. According to APOPO, a single rat can clear an area the size of a tennis court in approximately 20 to 30 minutes, a task that would take a technician with a metal detector between one and four days to complete.
The reason for their efficiency is biological. African giant pouched rats are light enough to walk over a pressure-sensitive mine without detonating it, yet large enough to cover extensive areas quickly.
When they detect the scent of substances like TNT, they scratch the surface of the ground, signaling to their handlers to mark the location for safe mine removal.
A crucial advantage over metal detectors is that these animals ignore metallic scrap scattered across the soil, focusing solely on the scent of explosives. This makes the work much more precise in areas with debris.
An Impressive History and a World Record
The most famous of the HeroRATs was Magawa, who worked in Cambodia for five years and found 71 landmines and 38 items of unexploded ordnance. In 2020, he received a gold medal from the British veterinary charity People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, becoming the first rat in history to receive the award.
More recently, another HeroRAT named Ronin broke Magawa’s record and entered the Guinness World Records.
According to APOPO, since his deployment in the Preah Vihear province of Cambodia in August 2021, Ronin has detected 109 landmines and 15 items of unexploded ordnance. At just five years traditional, he can still work for another two years.
In total, APOPO reports that the HeroRATs have cleared more than 120 million square meters of former minefields in countries such as Angola, Azerbaijan, and Cambodia. To put that into perspective, that area is larger than the city of Paris.
Ferrets: The Unexpected “Engineers”
If rats are impressive, ferrets offer an even more unexpected contribution. In Derbyshire, England, the National Ferret Training School operates, run by zoologist James McKay, who is internationally recognized as an authority on ferrets and their uses in industry and agriculture.
The company maintains more than 50 ferrets of varying sizes and uses them to install fiber optic cables, locate blockages in underground drains, and even pull electrical cables through spaces inaccessible to machines.
The ferrets are equipped with a transmitter and a thin wire attached to their collar. As they navigate the pipes, the wire remains behind and is then used to pull the actual cable along the path the ferret traced.
Using ferrets for this type of work isn’t new. According to the National Ferret Training School, these animals were domesticated around 2,500 years ago, originally to hunt rabbits that humans couldn’t reach. The Roman Legion carried them on campaigns for precisely that reason.
From Drains to a Particle Accelerator
One of the most curious stories involving working ferrets involves particle physics. In 1971, scientists at what was then the United States National Accelerator Laboratory—later renamed Fermilab, in honor of physicist Enrico Fermi—faced a serious problem during the construction of a particle accelerator.
Microscopic fragments of metal were blocking the equipment’s vacuum tubes, which were approximately the diameter of a tennis ball. As no machine could clean these tubes, a British engineer named Robert Sheldon suggested using a ferret. For just $35, the laboratory purchased a small female ferret named Felicia, who was trained to run sections of 300-foot tubes with a wire attached to her collar.
According to Fermilab records, Felicia completed about a dozen successful runs and saved the laboratory thousands of dollars. She became a minor celebrity at the time, even appearing in Time magazine. After her retirement, engineer Hans Kautzky developed a mechanical device he called a “magnetic ferret” to continue the work.
Dogs That Sniff Out Diseases: The Planet’s Most Powerful Nose
While rats and ferrets are impressive, dogs offer a seemingly supernatural ability: detecting diseases by scent. Dr. Claire Guest, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Medical Detection Dogs, an organization based in Milton Keynes, England, is a leading authority on the subject.
According to Dr. Guest, dogs possess approximately 300 million olfactory receptors, while humans have only 5 million.
the structure of a dog’s nose allows them to inhale and exhale simultaneously, maximizing the detection of odor molecules. In other words they can identify extremely subtle scents and follow trails for hours.
These dogs have been trained to detect cancer, epilepsy, malaria, Parkinson’s disease, and even COVID-19. Medical Detection Dogs has trained and placed nearly 200 assistance dogs, which work daily to save their owners’ lives. In cancer screening tests, the organization’s dogs demonstrated a reliability rate of 93%, a higher rate than many conventional tests used by the British healthcare system.
Medical Assistance Dogs That Change Lives
Beyond detecting diseases in samples, Medical Detection Dogs also trains medical assistance dogs that live and work with a single human. These dogs are trained to alert their owners when a medical emergency is about to occur.
One particularly moving case involves Lauren, who suffers from postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and a functional neurological disorder. Her assistance dog, Mabel, learned to signal when Lauren is about to faint or have a seizure, placing her head on Lauren’s lap or preventing her from standing up.
Lauren was diagnosed at age 16 and, before having Mabel, couldn’t dress, bathe, or feed herself. She says the dog radically changed her life, allowing her to go out and move around independently. When asked if she would trade Mabel for a robot, her response was immediate: she wouldn’t trade her for anything, because in addition to alerting, there is an emotional connection that no machine can replicate.
Why Nature Still Beats Technology
What connects all these animals—rats, ferrets, and dogs—is the ability evolution has given them over millions of years: a keen sense of smell, a body adapted to confined spaces, intelligence, and the ability to learn through positive reinforcement. Technology has advanced enormously, but it has yet to reliably replicate these characteristics at a reasonable cost.
According to APOPO, the operational cost of maintaining a rat for demining is significantly lower than the investment required for robots or advanced sensors. This allows humanitarian organizations to clear much larger areas with available resources. In the fields of engineering and healthcare, the situation is similar: ferrets and dogs offer practical, economical, and reliable solutions that technology has yet to surpass.
In an era where automation seems poised to replace everything, these animals remind us of a simple but powerful fact: nature still has much to teach us.
Do you believe technology will one day replace these animals in their roles? Should the HeroRATs be considered official heroes by the countries they help liberate? Leave your comment below and join the discussion.
