Giant rats could soon help sniff out illegally smuggled goods

A new kind of border patrol agent could soon start work in African ports, sniffing out illegal goods that are smuggled across country lines. They’re rats. And they wear tiny red vests.

African giant pouched rats have been trained to identify pangolin scales, elephant ivory and other items from at-risk species, researchers report October 30 in Frontiers in Conservation Science. The animals could soon play a part in deterring the international wildlife trade.

Wildlife smugglers “are disrupting the biodiversity on the ground by poaching specific species,” says Isabelle Szott, a behavioral ecologist who helped train rats in Morogoro, Tanzania, with APOPO, a nonprofit that deploys scent-detection animals. “It’s very

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