Magawa died Jan. 8 at age 8, about six months after being retired from mine hunting.
For his work, he was given a gold medal by the British veterinary charity People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) in 2020—the highest civilian award an animal can receive, and the first time a rat received such an honor. PDSA said that at the time, he was able to make 35 acres of land safe and livable for Cambodians. The award turned Magawa into an international hero.
Magawa was one of hundreds of “hero rats” that have been trained since the 1990s by APOPO to detect landmines. In 30 minutes, these rats can scan swathes of land as big as tennis courts for any presence of explosive chemicals. A human being with a metal detector will take four days to do the same job. While other animals can be trained to detect mines, APOPO found rats best suited for the job due to their small size—weighing less than three pounds, they are too light to set off the landmines.
He cleared 35 acres (0.14 km²), while clearing “a tennis court” (200 m²) takes only 30 minutes. Am I missing something? 140’000/200 = 700. 700x30 minutes = 350 hours. If he does only one per day (so 0.5 hours per day), that are still only two years.
According to his
he did 56 acres not 35 as the article mentions (maybe the article only counts the area in a specific place or something). That’d be 226k sqm, so following your calculation 226000/200 = 1130, 1130x30 = 565 hours.
Based on the same page, his working career lasted 5 years starting in 2016. So 565/5 = 113 hours of work a year on average.
I’m gonna guess they don’t work every day of the year (e.g. their handlers would not work every day) and potentially also can’t work during extreme heat or rain or other adverse conditions. I’m not sure how long a rat is willing to work or keep focus or how fast they get tired but with travel times and having to set up for them/collect them I think it’s believable that they can only do 1-2 of these fields a day, and that they can only work around 110 days per year.
My alternative explanation is that he mastered the “find mine” command easily, but didn’t quite manage the “come back” and he was just out partying for a week after every day of work.
You can choose which one you want to believe.
Obviously the one with the party.
Some quick reading suggests your .5 hours a day and 2 years might not be so far off? He was used as a mascot for the program, so who knows how many of his 7.5 years were training and mascotting rather than active de-mining. Also if you look at images of the operation, it obviously requires human setup prior to the rats doing their job, and presumably the humans need to do the controlled detonations when mines are found.
Ah, interesting.