Bart Weetjens: How I taught rats to sniff out land mines

http://www.ted.com At TEDxRotterdam, Bart Weetjens talks about his extraordinary project: training rats to sniff out land mines. He shows clips of his "hero rats" in action, and previews his work's next phase: teaching them to turn up tuberculosis in the lab.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

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  Science & Technology

[RiverSiege]

It's videos like this that I love TED for

[Bob P]

Awesome!

What's up with the two rat haters who didn't like this video?

[samala51]

This is what TED is all about

[KASPER FINN]

the rats don't weigh enough to set off the mines, so they are completely safe

[Belinda Rankin]

Glad to see raty getting a bit of good publicity- it is interesting rats are the natural chemists in the group of organisms.

[susanavidal]

I met him at Skoll World Forum in Oxford in 2010, he is a very humble and at the same time amazing person (and a monk)

[Hiphop101ize]

why is this creepy german dude wearing a karate suit

[faireyland23]

I can NOT get the script to turn off and I've had my computer looked at a million times. PLEASE do something with your equitment to turn off TEDTALK !!!!! when a user turns it off by choice. I am sick to death of TEDTALK !!!!

[ngeliatduit]

Lama-Lama bisa Gila!!. Good Video!!

[OmenLW]

Where the heck is the rats bomb suit?!

[Flusercom]

nice video, Thanks for shared