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Super Rat: the record-setting rodent sniffing out landmines and saving lives
Rats don’t always have the best reputations, but a rat called Ronin with a super sense of smell is working to change that.
Between August 2021 and February 2025, Ronin uncovered 109 landmines and 15 other pieces of unexploded ordnance in a region close to Siem Reap in Cambodia, according to Guinness World Records. The Belgian nonprofit’s team of landmine-sniffing rats can search an area the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes – something that could take a deminer with a metal detector up to four days. Cambodia’s Preah Vihear province, where Ronin was deployed has one of the highest landmine densities in the world following decades of conflict in the 20th century, including heavy bombing by the US during the Vietnam War.
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