[Captured image from YouTube]
Russian researchers are working on “cyborg rats”, which are specialized in detecting and locating bombs based on their sense of smell.
Rats’ sense of smell surpasses dogs’ and pigs’, up to a few hundred times of humans’. Using their great sense, Russia plans to create an army of rats which could detect bombs in possible terrorist threats and other situations.
The rodents would also have microchips implanted to decode information flowing through its brain. The Russian scientists are currently working on finding out a connection between a rat’s brain in a normal state and the state when a trained rat detects a bomb.
Once the decoding is done, the bomb-sniffing rodents are expected to be a vital part of Russia’s anti terrorist project. Rats can get to places where human cannot reach. It’s also very stealthy, and hard to detect.
The Russian scientists face another obstacle other than finding the connection, an average of lifespan of the rats is about a year, but it takes almost three months to train it.
Rats are already taking great roles in terms of bomb defusing. Rats which do not have any cybernetic implant, are trained to detect landmines in areas still in conflict. The project had been in development since the early 2000’s and been in action for last few years.
아주경제 박세진 기자 = swatchsjp@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
