Meet The Tiny Hero “Magawa The Mine Sniffing Rat,” Honoured With Gold Medal For Searching Explosive Devices

Cambodia:

Have you ever thought about a mouse, what can a mouse do?

Eat cheese, dug some small tunnels, rome around in the house or something like this.

Meet, Magawa, the rat, the mouse, the cute tiny animal…

Magawa is the landmine detection rat and he has recently been honoured with a miniature PDSA Gold Medal, the animal equivalent of the George Cross.

Magawa is a giant African pouched rat. He has been trained by charity APOPO. This charity has 45 rats and their work is to detect the landmines and other explosive devices hidden under tough terrains.

The charity has 31 more rats, and their work is to detect tuberculosis in humans.

Magawa detected 39 landmines and 28 items of unexploded ordnance, since his time in APOPO.

APOPO charity believes that, Magawa has become the most successful rat who has cleared more than 141,000 squares meters of lands, in comparison this is equivalent of 20 football grounds. Along with that in the history of 77 years of charity he has becomes the first rat to take in this popular award.

Magawa is described by the charity as “bundle of energy” and a “real character with a steely determination.” He has enormous energy and can sniff explosives 96 times than conventional solutions.

Christophe Cox, the Chief Executive of charity APOPO, told the PA news agency, “To receive this medal is really an honour for us. I have been working with APOPO for over 20 years, especially for our animal trainers who are waking up every day, very early, to train those animals in the morning.”

He further said, “But also it is big for the people in Cambodia, and all the people around the world who are suffering from landmines. The PDSA Gold Medal award brings the problem of landmines to global attention.”

The officials are giving training to these rats, and they are saying that these rats are more intelligent than other animals as they do task on time and get rewards.

They do their training for 30 minutes in the early morning every day. The rats require an yearly training before they are certified.

When they walk on landmine fields, they sniff for certain chemicals compound odours, and once they found the odour of the mines, they scratch to indicate the location of the mines.

Magawa is trained for the chemical compound which is found in landmines. They ignore rest of thing in that but they particularly detected chemical compounds and they do this thing faster than metal detectorist.

At present, Magawa is close to his retirement, and yet he still can detect the area of a tennis court not more than in 30 minutes. Usually a normal person would take four days with their metal detectors to scan the area.

PDSA Director General Jan McLoughlin said. “The work of Magawa and APOPO is truly unique and outstanding.”

He further said, “Cambodia estimates that between four and six million landmines were laid in the country between 1975 and 1998, which have sadly caused over 64,000 casualties.”

He quoted Magawa and said, “Magawa’s work directly saves and changes the lives of men, women and children who are impacted by these landmines. Every discovery he makes reduces the risk of injury or death for local people.”

The PDSA Animal Awards programme is looking forward to enhance the status of the animals in the society and honour them for their extraordinary contribution they make to our lives.

The DG Jan McLoughlin further said for Magawa, “’Magawa’s dedication, skill and bravery are an extraordinary example of this and deserve the highest possible recognition. We are thrilled to award him the PDSA Gold Medal.”

Cambodia is the country with highest number of amputees due to land mines in the world. It is estimated that the number of amputees is more than 40,000.

We wish him a great retirement ahead and thank the work he has done for his country.