Magawa, an African giant pouched rat has been successfully rewarded a prestigious gold medal for his work and dedication for helping out to detect land mines. This rat has sniffed out 39 landmines and also 28 unexploded munitions throughout his career.
Magawa has been presented with its Gold Medal by the UK veterinary charity PDSA. The award was given to the African giant pouched rat for “life-saving devotion to duty, in the location and also clearance of deadly landmines in Cambodia”. Magawa has saved the place from a total of up to six million landmines in the southeast Asian country.
The PDSA’s Gold Medal has been inscribed with the words “For animal gallantry or devotion to duty”. Out of all the 30 animal recipients of the award, Magawa is the first rat that has been proudly awarded. This seven-year-old rodent has been trained by the one and only Belgium-registered charity called Apopo which is based in Tanzania. This specific facility has been raising all the animals. It also is famously known as HeroRATs. The purpose of Apopo to train all these animals are to detect landmines and also tuberculosis since the 1990s era. The animals will be certified after a year of hard work and also training.
Christophe Cox who is Apopo’s chief executive told the Press Association news agency, “To receive this medal is really an honor for us”. He also added, “But also it is big for the people in Cambodia, and all the people around the world who are suffering from landmines”.
According to the facts stated by Apopo, Magawa is a born and raised African giant pouched rat in Tanzania. He weighs 1.2kg (2.6lb) and also is 70cm (28in) long. Even though his size is far larger than many other rat species, Magawa is still considered to be small enough and light enough that he does not trigger mines if he walks over them.
All the rats there are trained to detect and to be familiar with a chemical compound within the explosives. This means that they totally ignore the scrap metal and is able to search for mines more quickly. Once they find an explosive, they will immediately scratch the top to alert their human co-workers. Magawa is one of then rats that is capable of searching a field the size of a tennis court in just 20 minutes. This ability is something Apopo says would take a person with a metal detector between one and four days to be done.
Magawa only works for half an hour a day in the mornings and he also is nearing retirement age. The PDSA director-general that is Jan McLoughlin said his work with Apopo was a very “truly unique and outstanding” experience. Jan McLoughlin said, “Magawa’s work directly saves and changes the lives of men, women, and children who are impacted by these landmines”. She also added, “Every discovery he makes reduces the risk of injury or death for local people”.
Sources: BBC News.
