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Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

bbc.com

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Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#41

Post by catlikesshrimp »

ajb wrote: post #34

One demining expert claims that the rats are actually no good, but the charity persists with them anyway: https://nolandmines.com/APOPO%20rats.html I have no expertise. His arguments sound very plausible though.

This is the most technical post, and it will go almost unnoticed.

A cool story about a rat or a dog draws more attention than mines which were missed and maimed people years after searching the field.

Anyways, the author of that piece is a little mad, but in the sense that it is worth serious consideration. TLDR: the rats aren't cost effective and, worst of all, haven't scientifically proved to be effective.

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#42

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #21
monster_group wrote: post #6

Stark reminder of how precious and meaningful a life can be - of any creature, no matter how small. We should be nice to all creatures not just humans.

I agree. However, you get insane push back the second you start to mention veganism. And yes, that is a luxury and there large parts of the world where that's not an option, but if you're reading this comment you probably could survive without eating meat.

Also, I personally think framing it as a binary or quasi religious decision is counterproductive.

I was vegetarian for some years, before ultimately deciding I just run better on an omnivore diet. But for environmental and ethical reasons I decided to make meat more of a side dish vs the center of the meal, and to mostly eat chicken vs more high environmental impact animal proteins like beef.

I think a lot of people that would never go full vegan can do well on this sort of less meat middle road.

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#45

Post by nickff »

jampekka wrote: post #37
caycep wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that their fault or is there maybe a giant reason nearby why they are doing this?

Whatever the reason, this will increase the likelihood of landmine casualties in the future. And not necessarily (only) in this area, but it weakens the treaty in general. Part of these kinds of treaties is to accept some additional difficulty or expenses in defence for a more widespread benefit. I'm living in Finland and I would have accepted these.

Would you expect other countries to come to Finland’s aid if the country had declined to employ all the ‘force-multipliers’ that were available to it?

I would not expect other countries to come to Finland’s aid if Finland had made such decisions.

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#46

Post by pimlottc »

fmbb wrote: post #38
dtsykunov wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess, first they send them links to confluence wiki.

All deprecated pages with outdated info of course. But the comments have links to Slack threads about the incorrect info.

“Feel free to update the wiki to correct anything you find that’s outdated”

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#47

Post by jampekka »

nickff wrote: post #45
jampekka wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the reason, this will increase the likelihood of landmine casualties in the future. And not necessarily (only) in this area, but it weakens the treaty in general. Part of these kinds of treaties is to accept some additional difficulty or expenses in defence for a more widespread benefit. I'm living in Finland and I would have accepted these.

Would you expect other countries to come to Finland’s aid if the country had declined to employ all the ‘force-multipliers’ that were available to it? I would not expect other countries to come to Finland’s aid if Finland had made such decisions.

161 countries are still in the Ottawa Treaty, including all European countries except the ones who withdrew. I have hard time seeing how this treaty would have much effect on wartime alliances.

But if that's the case, what are "all the force multipliers"? Chemical weapons? Biological weapons? What share of the GDP for defence?

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#49

Post by Rendello »

quirkot wrote: post #20

Magawa cleared 1,517,711 sq.ft of land. He could work at a pace of 2,808 sq.ft (a doubles tennis court) every 20 minutes. If he maintained that pace, he worked 180.2 hours. Let's assume, with hazardous terrain, he worked 25% that speed on average. If that's the case he worked ~720 hours during a 5-6 year career. A different rat, Ronin, that found more stuff found a total of 124 explosive devices. So Magawa found no m…

Another comment pointed out that a at least one de-mining expert is skeptical:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680882

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#50

Post by lostlogin »

sonofhans wrote: post #22
gavmor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one rat mentor another?

You can teach a kid to change a tire without saying a word. It’s the same thing. Rats are very smart and very social. Rats that were good at teaching Rathood to their little ones had more that survived. Put food in a maze and I’m sure rats would teach other rats how to get it. I expect this is similar.

Our dog learned to find tennis balls by smell off a dog that was good at it. This was after me one walk with this dog.

Every trip to the park got us a few.

Then he ate one and have himself a bowel obstruction and me a great enthusiasm for pet insurance.

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