Rodent trainer Neema Justin, 33, shares a moment with an African giant pouched rat after an exercise in detecting illegal wildlife products at the Apopo training facility in Morogoro, Tanzania. Apopo's staff often form close bonds with their rats. Tommy Trenchard/for NPR hide caption Daniel is on a mission.
Somewhere in the rubble and debris that surround him inside this wrecked building in central Tanzania, a survivor is trapped. Daniel is determined to find him. He navigates the wreckage like a pro, just as he’s been taught during his long months of search-and-rescue training.
Moving methodically from room to room, he peers into dark corners obscured by debris and scans behind what’s left of the furniture. The job isn’t easy, and for his lifesaving work, he’s paid peanuts. But that doesn’t bother him.
Daniel is, after all, a rat. And peanuts just happen to be his favorite food. Daniel is one of a cohort of elite "rescue rats” currently enrolled at the Apopo training centre in the Tanzanian town of Morogoro.
Since the early 2000s, Apopo’s African giant pouched rats have been using their acute sense of smell to sniff out landmines and detect TB in sputum samples. Now, they look set to become search-and-rescue specialists too. Today’s operation is a training exercise.
The “survivor” is, in fact, one of Daniel’s trainers, and the “disaster zone” has been carefully constructed to simulate a building struck by an earthquake or tsunami. It takes Daniel ju.
