Rats have been a source of much rage and fear for their various behaviors and disease-carrying proclivities. But they are an impressive evolutionary smelling machine and pretty easy to train. Researchers have trained rats to use their remarkable sense of smell for a variety of heroic deeds that are saving many human lives. These are their stories... dun dun.

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Links:

1. https://www.discovery.com/nature/rats-are-being-trained-to-rescue-earthquake-survivors-
2. La Londe, et al. (2014) - Training pouched rats to find people. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 48(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.181
3. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/giant-rats-trained-sniff-out-tuberculosis-africa/
4. Poling, A., Weetjens, B., Cox, C., Beyene, N., Durgin, A., & Mahoney, A. (2011). Tuberculosis detection by giant african pouched rats. The Behavior analyst, 34(1), 47–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03392234
5. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/23/rats-who-sniff-out-tubersulosis
6. Kanaan, R., Farkas, N., Hegyi, P., Soós, A., Hegyi, D., Németh, K., Horváth, O., Tenk, J., Mikó, A., Szentesi, A., Balaskó, M., Szakács, Z., Vasas, A., Csupor, D., & Gyöngyi, Z. (2021). Rats sniff out pulmonary tuberculosis from sputum: a diagnostic accuracy meta-analysis. Scientific reports, 11(1), 1877. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-81086-x

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