Posted on 06/06/2021 3:39:03 AM PDT by nickcarraway
After five years of sniffing out land mines and unexploded ordnance in Cambodia, Magawa is retiring.
The African giant pouched rat has been the most successful rodent trained and overseen by a Belgian nonprofit, APOPO, to find land mines and alert his human handlers so the explosives can be safely removed. Last year, Magawa won a British charity's top civilian award for animal bravery - an honor so far exclusively reserved for dogs.
"Although still in good health, he has reached a retirement age and is clearly starting to slow down," APOPO said. "It is time."
(Excerpt) Read more at kob.com ...
Looks more like a wallaby than a rat.
Retirement? For a rat? Why? Fauxi hasn’t retired yet, why should this rat?
Retiring to the menu at the local Restaurant.
He did it for the treats. Anthropomorphising animals is lame.
Richard Gere wants to personally congratulate him. :P
Am I missing the point here? It seems to me they’re lauding the fact that Cambodia is rewarding this animal’s seven years loyal service by essentially warehousing it under conditions that sound uncannily similar to the way we warehouse capital criminals serving life sentences. How rewarding a life could it be when all there is to do is eat and poop and run in the wheel for a while each day before being put back in your box? Every day is Groundhog Day until it’s called to rat heaven. In the meanwhile it’s doing nothing productive but still costs money to maintain.
Kill the silly bugger (as painlessly as possible), process it into food for the other rats, and re-direct the money that would have been wasted on sustaining its Groundhog Day existence toward the raising and training more mine-sniffing rats that can have a positive impact on human lives.
like it knew the danger... please
Man, that rat has balls.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.