A landmine-sniffing rat is retiring after 5 years of helping explosives teams clear 20 football fields worth of land

It has been years of arduous and dangerous work for landmine expert Magawa. He’s finally retiring after an illustrious career on a squad of elites trained to suss out landmines.

The catch — Magawa, 7, is a rat.

He is part of the HeroRATs, a squad of African giant pouched rats imported to Siem Reap, Cambodia, from Tanzania. The rodent squad works for Belgian nonprofit Apopo, which finds and safely removes landmines left behind from Cambodia’s civil war.

In full: https://www.insider.com/mine-sniffing-rat-retires-after-years-detecting-explosives-in-cambodia-2021-6

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