There are not many people around who say they like rats (老鼠), when you see one of them, you may want to run in the opposite direction.
There is one man though who has always enjoyed staying with rats, even when he was a young boy. His name is Bart Weetjens and he comes from Belgium in Europe. As he grew up he learned everything about rats. He knew that they have a very strong sense of smell. He realized that it might be possible to train rats to help solve a problem that troubled some Southeast Asian countries.
Clearing away unexploded bombs and landmines(未爆炸的炸弹和地雷) is a difficult job. Bart began to train rats to look for explosives. Because a rat's sense of smell is so strong, they are able to smell a thing known as TNT that is used in bombs. Besides, because rats are not heavy, if they place their weight on an uri exploded bomb, they will not cause it to explode.
Bart chose African Giant Pouched Rats for the job. They are well known for being calm(镇定的) and smart. Training begins when they are about six weeks old, and it lasts for nine months. Once trained, one rat can search up to 200 m2in 20 minutes, the same area would take a human up to four days. Trained rats are known as Mine Detection Rats, or MDRs, and they have worked successfully in Cambodia since 2015.
