Lab rats are undergoing a major makeover to become the newest bomb detection force for Russia, the Daily Mail reports. Russian scientists are already hard at work trying to combine lab rats’ powerful sense of smell with the newest technology, but their method is far from perfect.
First, scientists have to implant a microchip inside the rat’s head. This headdress-looking attachment allows the scientists to monitor the rat’s brain waves. Next, the rat must be trained to identify to explosives and drugs—a difficult and time-consuming task. If these scientists are successful, the rodents will be able to alert their handlers to the dangerous or illegal material before they themselves have even had time to register it.
But here’s the kicker, it takes three months to train a rat properly react to explosives or drugs, and on average, lab rats only live for a year. So just when the army of cyborg rats is fully trained and ready to enter dangerous situations, they only have a few months of active duty.
Besides their keen sense of smell, rats are particularly useful for these tasks because they can squeeze into the tiniest of cracks and fit into the smallest spaces. In addition, scientists have also noted the value of these rats in rescue situations. Say, there’s a pile of rubble. One of these rats could potentially squeeze through the debris to find survivors, thus making rescue procedures more efficient.
Adding to the short lifespan and long training period, scientists are still trying to develop the correct algorithms to study and understand the results of this testing. So there is still a ways to go in this study.
This isn’t the first time rats have been called upon for dangerous tasks. In other parts of the world, rats are already being used to detect land mines.
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