APOPO

Training rats to save lives.

Overview

APOPO is a social enterprise that researches develops and implements detection rats technology for humanitarian purposes such as Mine Action and Tuberculosis detection. A Belgian NGO with headquarters in Tanzania APOPO has operations in Mozambique Thailand Angola Cambodia Vietnam and Laos. APOPO trains African giant pouched rats to detect the odour signatures from volatile compounds in landmines and Tuberculosis. Olfaction is the primary sensory modality of rats they have an extraordinarily high number of functional genes related to odour detection. Moreover they are hardy animals that are easy to maintain humanely they learn quickly and they do not bond to handlers and can therefore be transferred from one handler to another quite easily.