Magawa

Magawa with his handler last year in Siem Reap, Cambodia.Credit...Cindy Liu/Reuters

A hero just passed away, the four legged kind who sniffed out over 100 mines in Cambodia with far greater efficiency than the use of electronic hardware to do the same thing.

Magawa, a rat who spent most of his life sniffing out land mines in Cambodia and was recognized for his lifesaving contributions, died last weekend, the nonprofit that trained him said in a statement on Tuesday.

The African giant pouched rat was part of the “HeroRAT” initiative run by the Belgian nonprofit APOPO, which works across Southeast Asia and Africa, training rats to detect land mines and tuberculosis.

Over the course of a yearslong career with APOPO, Magawa found more than 100 land mines and other pieces of unexploded ordnance, the nonprofit organization said, describing him as the most successful rat in the program to date.

In comparison to electronics ...

APOPO’s so-called “HeroRATs” are trained to detect the explosive TNT, and can search an area the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes. The same work would usually take a person with a metal detector four days.