After five years of heroic work searching for landmines in Cambodia, “hero rat” Magawa is finally retiring from active service.
Magawa, the hero rat who earned his gold medal for saving lives by sniffing out 71 landmines and dozens of hidden explosives, is retiring from duty.
Magawa was so successful in his five-year career detecting unexploded ordnance in Cambodia that he became the first rat to be given the PDSA gold medal, sometimes described as “the George Cross for animals.”
The seven-year-old animal was among cohorts of so-called heroRATs bred for the purpose in Tanzania.
African giant pouched rats, which live for up to eight years, are larger than most rats but light enough to walk over a landmine without setting it off.
Magawa, who is 70 centimeters long, became the most successful rodent trained by a Belgian charity, Apopo, which says he has cleared more than the equivalent of 20 football fields, discovering 71 landmines and 38 other unexploded items.
BBC said his handler Malen says the seven-year-old African giant pouched rat is "slowing down" as he reaches old age, and she wants to "respect his needs."
There are thought to be up to six million landmines in the Southeast Asian country, left over by the civil war in the 1970s.
Magawa was trained by the Belgium-registered charity Apopo, which is based in Tanzania and has been raising the animals - known as HeroRATs - to detect landmines since the 1990s.
The rats are trained to detect a chemical compound within the explosives, meaning they ignore scrap metal and can search for mines more quickly.
Once they find an explosive, they scratch the top to alert their human co-workers.
Due to his small stature – he weighs just one and a half kilos – Magawa can detect landmines without triggering an explosion if he walks over them.
The rat can search a field the size of a tennis court in just 20 minutes – something Apopo says would take a person with a metal detector between one and four days, BBC said.
Last week, Apopo said a new batch of young rats had been assessed by the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) and passed "with flying colours".
Magawa, the group said, would stay in post for a few more weeks to "mentor" the new recruits and help them settle in.
"Magawa's performance has been unbeaten, and I have been proud to work side-by-side with him," Malen said.
"He is small but he has helped save many lives allowing us to return much-needed safe land back to our people as quickly and cost-effectively as possible."
Last September, Magawa was awarded the PDSA Gold Medal - sometimes described as the George Cross for animals - for his "life-saving devotion to duty".
He was the first rat to be given the medal in the charity's 77-year history.
Tags: #mysteryandfun, #rats, #Magawa, #landmines, #Cambodia