Magawa

He was bred and trained by APOPO in Tanzania, an African giant pouched rat taught over about a year to recognise the scent of TNT and to scratch the ground above it — and, crucially, light enough at a kilo and a bit that he could walk over a pressure-fused mine without setting it off. He was flown to Cambodia in 2016, where decades of war left somewhere between four and six million mines in the ground and around 64,000 people have been killed or injured by them since 1979. He worked the cool of the early morning on a harness running between two handlers, clearing an area the size of a tennis court in about twenty minutes — work a person with a metal detector needs four days to do, because in Cambodia the ground is full of scrap metal and the rat only cares about explosive. Over five years he searched more than 225,000 square metres, about thirty football pitches, and found seventy-one landmines and thirty-eight items of unexploded ordnance: more than any other APOPO rat. In September 2020 the PDSA gave him its Gold Medal, the civilian equivalent of the Dickin Medal, and made a miniature of it for his collar. He was the first rat in the charity's ninety-year history to receive it. He retired in June 2021, slowing down, and died the following January at seven, in Siem Reap, having handed his fields to the younger rats.

Honours

• 2016–2021Cleared more than 225,000 square metres in Cambodia — about thirty football pitches
• · Found 71 landmines and 38 items of unexploded ordnance, more than any other APOPO rat
• 2020PDSA Gold Medal — the first rat in the charity's history to receive it
• 2021Retired in June after five years' work

Their kind

Nocturnal, long-lived and led almost entirely by scent. Light enough not to trigger a pressure mine, which is the whole reason the demining programmes trained them.

A life in seasons