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Heroic Rats · Why We Do What We Do

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You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome to Why we do
0:16
what we do. I am your scurrying host Abraham, and I'm your master
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splinter host Shane. Oh, that's a good one. Or a psychology podcast.
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We talk about all the cool things that people do, and sometimes we
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talk about the cool things that animals do. And that's kind of what we're
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talking about today. I mean, isn't it always that the things that animals
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do are way cooler than the things that humans do most of the time.
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I mean, like, think about this, Our last episode with scientology very
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not cool. This is way cooler, endured. Yeah, So, anyway,
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as I said, we talk about the psychology thing. If you're joining
0:51
us for the first time, then welcome. I think this is gonna be
0:54
a really cool one. This is I think more par for the course with
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the kind of topics that we tend to do. And it's also is it's
1:00
fairly quick, so we'll get into a sort of our big intro and we'll
1:04
unpack it and all of that. But I don't think this is going to
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be one of our longer ones. Although as we always say, we drag
1:10
things out, you know, at nauseum. So we'll see. It's a
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skill set. It is a skill set. And Shane, do you know
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a day that this episode comes out? Wednesday? It does come out Wednesday.
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Thank you. That was really good. Comedy chops excellent. It's late
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at night. I'm tired, I'm delirious. It's great. It comes out
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one week after our last episode and one week before our next episode. In
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fact, wild so predictable. This comes out on May twenty fourth, and
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May twenty fourth has a few holidays that we'll recognize. Not as many as
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some other days, but it's got some holidays to talk about. Yeah,
1:45
so today's Brother's Day, so I get to celebrate my little brother and I
1:49
will as well. You're gonna celebrate my little brother too. That's great.
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Yeah, yeah, he's the past. I wish it was my little brother.
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It is also Tiera Day for those of you wearing tiaras or tierras how
2:01
you like to say it. And if you have your tierra and it's not
2:04
adjusted, please take some time to adjust it, because you deserve that,
2:07
queen. Indeed. Also, it's Scavenger Hunt Day, which is so much
2:09
fun. Yeah, love scavenger hunts. It is aviation maintenance technician day,
2:15
so appreciate those people who help keep the planes in the sky and not falling
2:20
to the ground. Interesting, my brother in law's a helicopter mechanics, so
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that's perfect good job. Justin It's also International Heritage Breeds Day Breeds Week I'm
2:28
sorry week, even so we get seven of them. It's right to seven
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consecutive celebration. I had to look into this one because I was a little
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curious what that meant, and it has to do with how as we've practiced
2:40
agriculture, we've sort of bred animals into this weird chimera of not what they
2:45
used to be, and so the Heritage Breeds celebrates and promotes the idea and
2:51
practice of maintaining some of those species as they were before we started turning them
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into sheens for human consumption. Yes, yeah, I got you, Yeah,
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before they got all weird. Very good, all right now, As
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just as a quick thing, people who listen to us, thank you so
3:09
much for being here. People who are joining us for the first time,
3:13
either way, wherever you fall, if you would like to support us,
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you can do that several ways. You can join us on Patreon, you
3:19
can pick up some merchant our store. You can like and subscribe, you
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can leave a rating in review. You can tell a friend about us.
3:23
You can adopt two rats, name one of them why we do and the
3:27
other one what we do. And if you do that, please post about
3:30
it and tag us in those Yeah, and I'll talk more about how you
3:31
can support us at the end of this topic. And if you would like
3:35
to reach out to us directly, you can email us at info at WWDWWD
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podcast dot com. Let's get into our top RC. Yes, let's talk
3:43
about this. Rats are rad as hell. Indeed. All right, now,
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let's set the stage. We're going to tell this story for Matt style.
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So picture this. It is twenty sixteen. There's a reporter for The
3:57
Guardian. It is journalist Emma Young and she just gcribes an encounter she had
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and a lab in Tanzania. Yes, in her report, she describes a
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compact, sweltering room within a compound nestled in the verdant southern highlands of Tanzania.
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By the way, Tanzania. Best coffee I've ever had was from Tanzania.
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Off to try that awesome, Yeah, oh my god. It came
4:18
from a very specific farm it's like a very specific batch, but it was
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delicious when I had it. Nice now, and an intriguing scene that unfolded.
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On a mid December day, three technicians adorned in white lab coats observed
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an intricate glass and metal chamber and a sizeable brown pouch rat named Charles.
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What a great name, right, So with care, Charles was lowered into
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the chamber. His snout poised toward a sequence of ten sliding metal plates positioned
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at the base of the chamber. So a technician unlatched the first plate,
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unveiling a small hole, and Charles nasally explored this hole, his acute old
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factory senses at work, but he decided to move on. He did not
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spending any time at this hole. The hole was promptly sealed with a resonant
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click, and a subsequent plate was slid open. So the next hole in
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the sequence, This time Charles was interested. He sniffed intently, diligently scraping
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his paws against the metal surface, his five claws spread resolutely, and a
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technician observing this calls out, two, oh, yeah, that's what you
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do when a rat scratches a hole. So all right, now near the
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window. Charles colleague had a secretive chart, covertly obscuring its contents to avoid
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contaminating their data collection. The tech discreetly marked a tick Emma curiosity peaked glanced
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over to glimpse the chart. A grid of small boxes arranged in ten columns
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and ten rows, each adorned with a distinct code within every line. Two
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boxes were shaded gray, and now a tick mark had been placed within a
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white square. Charles, the indomitable rat had potentially saved someone's life. So
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Charles, as we described kind of already as an African giant pouched rat,
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and he belongs to a unique species endemic to the vast expanse of sub Saharan
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Africa, and he's among a unique click of especially trained rodents, one of
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thirty of his kind residing and toiling diligently in Moragoro, which I think is
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the name of this sort of municipalette, if you will, situated a few
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one hundred kilometers west of Tanzania's bustling metropolis. Der s Salam. I really
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hope I did not butcher that. I'm sorry. And so we're talking about
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these rats here, these extraordinary rats partake in this groundbreaking endeavor, which is
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to detect the presence of tuberculosis. And want to describe more about tuberculosis,
6:40
but briefly, it is a malevolent ailment that ravages the lungs and jeopardizes countless
6:44
lives around the world. Yeah. It is also often referred to as the
6:47
consumption fact. Yes. Yes, so Charles was actually in a test and
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the positive samples that he was smelling had already been tested for tuberculosis or TV
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with randomational samples in the mix, and he and his training two detect TV
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was being compared against lab data and further, any positive samples would be then
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sent to the lab to look at for ATV diagnosis. Yep, kind of
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cool. Yeah, absolutely, So at this point, I'm kind I'm curious
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and we're talking about these rats, and I'm curious how our listeners, how
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did you feel about rats before hearing the story, And I'm going to be
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really curious to hear how you feel about rats after the story, So be
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prepared to fall in love with them. Now. John Oliver already kind of
7:31
is. He's pretty into erotic rat art, which he shows on his show.
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But yeah, so we're going to tell you all about these rats,
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I do want to say, because we've described them as these African giant pouched
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rats. They are large for rats, but they're not actually like huge.
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They're not cat size or anything like that. They're just kind of they're large.
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They're on the large side for a rat, but they're they're adorable.
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Yeah, they're giant for rats, but not giant for other animals that are
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actual giants. Yeah, not nearly as large as like an elephant or a
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blue whale. That'd be a horrifying sized rat. Now let's talk for a
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second because I think it's important to understand what these rats are doing this this
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test. But they're doing in relation to what you described as a horrific disease
8:13
called tuberculosis. Now, what tuberculosis is, or we're going to short and
8:18
shorten it for TB as we go forward. It's an infectious disease that causes
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lots of deaths worldwide, and even though there are vaccines and drugs available and
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have been for a long time, TB still kills more people than any other
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infectious disease. Isn't that wild? That's crazy, Like I had no idea.
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Yeah, it is actually a surprising. It's kind of one of these
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sneaky diseases you don't think about, but it's it's sort of out there doing
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incredible damage all the time. And according to the World Health Organization or WHO
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exactly, there were about ten million new cases of TB in a recent year,
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with one point two million deaths among people without HI and an additional two
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hundred and fifty one thousand deaths of tuberculosis patients among people who also had HIV.
9:07
That's wild, Yeah, it's rough, man, that's a huge number
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of people. Now. The main germ that causes TB is Mysobacterium tuberculosis.
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It usually infects the lungs. However, it can also spread to other parts
9:20
of the body, like the lymph nodes, the kidneys, abdomen, skin,
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bones, joints, and brain covering. So, I know we're talking
9:26
about rats, but you didn't expect that we were talking about diseases in this
9:30
episode, not nearly this much. Now, after being exposed to the germ,
9:33
the tuberculosis bacteria, most people don't get sick right away, but they
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can have this dormant infection called latent TB. A small percentage of people with
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latent TB, which is about five to fifteen percent will develop actual active TB
9:50
disease. People who are infected with both TB and HIV are at a much
9:54
higher risk of getting sick with the actual TB disease. Now and the States,
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it's recommended to screen all HIV infected patients for latent TV just in case.
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And people with weakened immune systems or those receiving certain types of treatment are
10:09
also more likely to develop active TB compared to the general population. So you
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can imagine like somebody who's on like an immuno suppressive type of medication or treatment,
10:18
like somebody who's maybe experiencing like cancer treatment HIV infected people make sense,
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like all of these folks that have suppressed immune systems are at risk here,
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sure, yeah, good point. Okay, So every year, as we
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said, there is a huge amount of spreading of this. If you were
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to chunk get into a year, there's approximately nine million cases of new TB
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diagnosed around the world, with a quarter of them a quarter of them in
10:43
the entire world, occurring in Africa. Sadly, Africa also has the highest
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death rate, not like number, but rate from tuberculosis compared to other regions.
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So not only do they have it spreading the most, but the people
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who actually then die from it is the the highest proportion of them occur even
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inside that population, so unfortunate. Now, yeah, TB can be prevented
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with the vaccine or treated with antibiotics, but if it's left untreated, it
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can be fatal. And unfortunately, many patients with TB are never diagnosed,
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which contributes to the spread of this disease. So it's kind of like early
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I would say it's like early COVID, where like people you couldn't get diagnosed
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because nobody knew what it was and it's spread so rapidly, but TB is
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far more deadly, right, And part of the reason for this is that
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the current microscope based test, which has been in use for a long time,
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like this has been the way of identifying tuberculosis samples for one hundred and
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twenty five years in Tanzania and other financially limited countries. It's not that great
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at detecting TV. It only detects about sixty percent of the cases, which
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means that a good forty percent of those cases are not are showing up as
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not being positive for TB. Even though those might then go on to cause
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illness and death and spread to other people and other more. By using this
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detection method, the microscope based detection, the success rate drops even lower and
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around twenty percent for people who are also infected with HIV. So you if
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you look at countries where you have high rates of HIV and high rates of
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TB, and then it becomes even more difficult to detect TV and people who
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have HIV. You can imagine that the detection system is like, I mean,
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that's you're operating at like guesswork levels at that point, right, that's
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wild. I mean, it's it's not efficient at all. Yeah, it's
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an unfortunate system. It's it's really a bummer that it's like that impactful and
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that difficult to even get a handle on it because we can't figure out how
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prevalent it is just by using the tools at sort of normal disposal. Right,
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absolutely, So I feel like we get fewer ads when we criticize them.
12:48
So here are some amazing, incredible products that you should definitely buy.
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Okay, so we've largely been talking about tuberculosis, but we started this story
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talking about Charles the rats. So let's get back to Charles. Remember we
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put him in this box, or they put him in the box. This
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is from the journalist's perspective, so she reported this and he was smelling samples,
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So in this box he smelled a hundred samples in that test and identified
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every sample that had already been positively idd for tuberculosis. Further, he identified
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twelve more that would go on for secondary testing. As we said, their
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testing is not great to try and confirm if there is in fact tuberculosis there.
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And Emma went on to describe how another larger rat was added to the
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chamber later after charles work was done, negus to go take a break,
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get a smoke, you know that sort of thing, And this new rat
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is added to the chamber to lend his nose to the same smelling tests as
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Charles. So they're getting some confirmation on there. And the new rat,
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his name is Vladdok, was even faster than Charles. In just fifteen minutes,
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Vladdox test confirmed almost all of charles Is correct detections and confirmed eight of
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the ten known cases out of there, so eighty percent success there and indicated
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an additional fifteen for subsequent testing. Wow, that's wild. Now these rats
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do in twenty minutes what it would take four days to accomplish using lab testing.
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So think about that for a second. It takes four days to accomplish
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this testing what a rat could do it in twenty minutes. And I think
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it's important when we talk about this because these are incredible animals with incredible old
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factory senses who are like people are afraid of these things because they are incredibly
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efficient and incredibly fast and just like really good at what they do. Rats
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are very good at what they do in general. Yeah, so you give
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them a test like this, they're gonna be good at it. Yeah.
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And actually, like that's a great segue because that's really what we should talk
14:46
about now, because we talked about recently in an episode about dogs being trained
14:52
to detect oncoming seizures in our March fifteen, twenty twenty three episodes Seizure Alert
14:56
Dogs and that was amazing, like amazing that they can do that. That
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was also a Wednesday, It was a Wednesday, good memory. And dogs
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are primarily used for these various medical smell tests, but rats are another good
15:15
option. Now we've also mentioned briefly, and I think we should return at
15:18
this at some point, but bees are also being used to detect cancer,
15:22
and then rats are being used to sniff out diseases and as we'll talk about
15:26
later, land mines and other things. So these rats kind of have some
15:28
cool properties. Let's go ahead and talk about that. These particular rats,
15:33
these giant African pout rats, do not have the evolutionary history of cooperation with
15:37
humans that dogs do. However, they are still trainable because you know,
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they are living organisms. And also, although dogs, specifically the bloodhound,
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have been shown to have the strongest sense of smell, the African pout rats
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are very competitive because they've proved more accurate in those situations finding things like buried
15:56
land mines than dogs ever have. So these rats are incredibly powerful when it
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comes to like this detection sense that they have. Yes, and this organization
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has really invested heavily in the use of rats for these type of endeavors.
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The organizations called a popo or a pop pop I'm going to guess a popo
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it stands for words that I'm not sure I should try and pronounce, for
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fear of the butchering I will do and the shame it will bring on me
16:22
and the embarrassment potentially to the company. But the translation of a Popo's actual
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name translates to anti personnel landmines detection product development is what they do, and
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this is this is a company that has invested the use of these rats for
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landmine detection primarily, but has expanded it. They've turned to using the rats
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to also help detect tuberculosis. I mean, it's pretty incredible they were able
16:45
to do that. Now you would think that and if this is an important
16:48
piece, You're talking about rats that detect these diseases and explosives, right,
16:52
two very different things, both things that kill people, but also very different
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things like I could have a bad cough or I could explode. And so
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when you start thinking about this, you kind of go, well, how
17:03
does this happen? And surprisingly the training is very similar, Like it's not
17:10
very different at all. So let's kind of break this up a little bit.
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So as far as training goes, the first kind of element that we
17:15
look at is this idea of positive reinforcement. For those listening to the show,
17:19
you're probably familiar, but if you're not, then basically what it is
17:22
is there's essentially some type of reward that occurs right after a response or a
17:26
behavior. And this procedure allows the organism to discriminate what is tuberculosis and what
17:33
is not, what is a landmine and what is not, and they simply
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train based on that and reward based on that. So set another way,
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this is a simple do a thing when you smell this disease, and you'll
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get a reward. And that's the contract that they set up with the rat.
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That's all it is. You do this, you get a reward when
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you smell this thing. When you don't smell this thing, if you do
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this, there's no reward. So on and so forth. Yes, and
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the rats must be able to do a few things in this training. I
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mean, that's the gist of the training is you just summarize it. But
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that means that they need to learn to do a few things. First,
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they must learn that they need to do something special when they smell a thing,
18:10
in this case a tuberculosis infected sample. The second is they need to
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do something else if they smell anything other than the target, the infected sample.
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The third thing is they learned something special that they need to do so
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that we can tell when they have detected something. Just saying this. Another
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way is those like you're going to notice something different in your environment when you
18:32
do that. You need to do this one specific action and don't do it
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at the times that you don't smell it, and only do it at the
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times when you do makes sense. So to train the rats, the researchers
18:41
would first get the rats to respond to an auditory queue that they earned a
18:45
food reward for. So like when they would hear this auditory queue, which
18:48
was usually a click, the person would make the click sound and immediately give
18:52
the rat a small mouthful of banana mash. Apparently rats love banana mash.
18:57
Yep. I mean I've seen eat like slice of pizza, so banana mashes
19:03
is much healthier. And they feed them with large plastic syringes so they don't
19:07
mama birden, So don't worry. They don't do anything like that. Like
19:10
I could you imagine that researcher it does that though, it's like, oh,
19:11
good job, well, and it does that, so they do that.
19:15
It's in this click sound. It's clicker training essentially. Yeah, and
19:18
I made the click with my mouth. But it's just like a little metal
19:19
thing that like like it looks almost look like a can topy just sort of
19:22
makes a click sound like that. It sounds like the dice bubble from Trouble.
19:26
It does. Yeah, the dice bubble from Trouble is basically the click
19:30
sound that they used to try. And they just get off the board game
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and they set it up and every time the rat goes yeah, it's a
19:36
click in a rattle. And then and then they send somebody home yep,
19:38
and the rat runs over to take a nibbla out of a syringe that's filled
19:41
with yellow mush love it. So once the rat is reliably running for food
19:47
when they hear the click, then the researchers then can train the rats to
19:49
perform an action that will then result in the click plus food. So basically
19:53
they kind of will start to wait till the rat is moving toward or starting
19:57
to do the thing they want, and any approximation of what that should look
20:02
like, and as soon as they do click, and then they get more
20:04
and more precise about it, so they'll stop accepting variations of that action and
20:08
only more precise versions of it that are exactly what it should look like.
20:14
In some arrangements of this tuberculosis situation, the rats must start clawing at a
20:18
target, so basically the smell of thing, they claw at something else to
20:21
indicate I smell the thing you want me to smell. In other arrangements,
20:26
the rats are trained to simply pause, so they will either smell target and
20:29
move on, or they'll smell target and then they'll hang there for a moment
20:32
until the researcher basically you clicks response and then they get to move on,
20:37
right, And so then the researchers gather samples of TB infected and non infected
20:41
spit and put it in an array so that all the samples look the same
20:45
and they are in containers that look the same kind of essentially like that,
20:48
and they teach the rats to perform whichever action they chose only when they smell
20:52
infected samples through repeated trials, providing food only when the rat does the action
20:57
that we talked about in response to the did sample and at no other time.
21:02
So the rat is clawing only clause in the presence of the TB slide
21:07
or the TB sample, and not anywhere else. And in this way the
21:11
rat will learn both that reacting to the sample will earn a reward, but
21:15
also that They only get the reward if they react to a specific type of
21:19
sample. So they can do the same thing across every sample, but they're
21:22
not going to get it unless they respond to specific examples at specific times.
21:26
Yes, this means that the rat is actually learning to react to the smell
21:30
of the sample, but no other features of it. Right, because let's
21:33
say that the spit had some amount of food in it, or something that
21:37
the person had drank, or something that was unique to their DNA and biology.
21:41
The rat's got to be able to filter all that out and it's only
21:44
going to say, this is the smell that I need to pay attention to.
21:47
The Other ones aren't important for me getting my banana mash right now?
21:49
Does that make sense? Yeah? Absolutely makes perfect sense. And so once
21:53
trained, then the rats can identify dozens of these samples in minutes. They
21:57
just cruise through them, super wick, able to just say smell yeah,
22:02
smell no, smell no, smell yesh, smell no, and like a
22:03
binary ones and Zero's machine, they just crank out tons of samples super fast,
22:10
really efficient. Wild. I mean, so in these training examples that
22:12
we're talking about, the rats have been eighty five to one hundred percent accurate
22:17
as compared to lab tests. So keep this in mind. We talked earlier
22:21
that lab tests are anywhere between twenty and at the highest sixty percent. So
22:26
already a rat is it's more accurate than a microscope test. And they're almost
22:30
perfect, yeah, which is amazing. They can be, they can be,
22:34
and so like further, they detected samples that the lab missed and later
22:37
confirmed as affected, so even better, they're like, no, no,
22:41
no, you messed up. I'm a rat. You're a human, you
22:42
dumb human. Here's how I'm going to fix this for you. As you
22:45
may have sort of picked up, this means obviously that tuberculosis itself has some
22:49
specific smell, and I didn't bother looking up the compounds. Maybe some of
22:53
you out there are like big on olfactory compounds and you'd be like, I
22:56
know what that is, and great, right in, let us know.
23:00
But what's important to know about this is that tuberculosis actually, like it does,
23:03
have apparently a pungent enough odor that if the infection is powerfully concentrated enough,
23:08
even humans can detect it. And apparently even the word tuberculosis, at
23:12
least part of that word, or some version of that word in other languages
23:15
has to do with the smell that like doctors who are especially trained can start
23:21
to pick up on the people who are like severely infected, yeah, with
23:25
that disease. And rats already have such a powerful nose that they're going to
23:27
detect things that are way below a humans threshold to detect, and so this
23:33
is a kind of easy task for them. They're like, it's basically like
23:36
you to go around pointing to thing and say car not car, and like
23:40
humans can do that very easily, right, Obviously rats can learn to do
23:42
that too, but they're just doing it with their nose because we can't see
23:45
as easily in the samples what's different. But the smell apparently is very easy
23:49
for them to pick up on. Interesting. Okay, that's good to know,
23:53
right, I don't want to smell it, but that's great that they
23:56
can. Yeah, I also think that I'm going to keep my distance as
23:59
far as I can. Absolutely, I will say really quick as before we
24:02
transition onto the next thing. In grad school, I was required to get
24:04
like annual TB tests, and I remember thinking, like, does anybody have
24:08
tubercules? Like why are we doing this? Is this disease that common.
24:11
I had no idea it was as common as it is. That's wild.
24:15
You know, I've not had to do a TV test here in Florida,
24:18
but I know like in some states like California, it's required to provide health
24:22
services. Yeah, Florida loves disease. They're They're like, yeah, they
24:26
put they put one in office. He's a governor. But that was good.
24:33
Now, that's that's essentially sort of the gist of the cool stuff about
24:36
rats and tuberculosis and how rats detect tuberculosis. I mean, obviously not cool
24:40
stuff about tuberculosis. That disease sucks, but there's actually even more cool stuff
24:44
to talk about. Now before we talk about those, I've kind of wondered,
24:48
do we get paid more if we don't let you know that ads are
24:52
coming? Let's find out. Oh shoot. So rats detecting disease is one
25:04
thing, one example of rats being heroes, but there are lots and lots
25:08
of examples of rats being these really cool creatures. And as we mentioned earlier,
25:11
there are lots of rats that can detect land mines and many parts of
25:15
the world that have suffered wars over the last century and its continuous war and
25:19
civil war and all that stuff. Many armies seeded marching planes with mines,
25:25
so the enemy troops traveling the area would explode upon contact with those mines.
25:29
They're very dangerous and often forgotten. The minds are sensitive to a relatively small
25:34
amount of weight on the trigger. And again they are in places now that
25:38
are densely populated and completely forgotten out of wartime, and so as a result,
25:42
these areas can become incredibly dangerous. Yeah, and exactly that, because
25:48
most armies really have not felt obligated to retrieve the minds once the war ends,
25:52
so fields may have these active land mines laying dormant for decades, and
25:57
these can often be out in areas that are but as you said, the
26:00
urban sprawl can creep into these areas, and we're talking civilians, children,
26:04
hikers, sort of everyday people. Soldiers can be in there too. And
26:08
then just animals strained through peaceful meadows or wherever that find their lives suddenly cut
26:14
short or their limbs spontaneously amputated when they encounter a random mind left recklessly decades
26:19
earlier, which is another point for why rats are cooler than humans. But
26:23
obviously The clean up is expensive. It's time consuming and extremely dangerous and quite
26:30
difficult because there's no way to pinpoint exactly where every single land mine was ever
26:33
buried ever without getting blown up or like dangerously close to being blown up.
26:37
Yeah right, I mean unless land mines now have GPS is on them,
26:41
but I don't think that they would do that for like military strategy. But
26:45
rats are far too small to detonate any of these mines. There's not enough
26:51
weight in these rats to land on a mine and then goodbye. Their superlative
26:56
power of smell allows them to detect buried mindes with remarkable accuracy. So not
27:03
only do they detect disease, they can find these straight land mines. I
27:06
would highly recommend that you look up some videos on this because it is adorable.
27:10
You can watch these videos online. Once trained, the experimentals will take
27:14
rats out into these fields that are believed to be contaminated with mines, and
27:18
they'll basically let the rats go on a little leash. I mean, you
27:21
can imagine they could just like let them go but for the purposes of trying
27:25
to like actually find the mines, and the rat now get distracted and went
27:27
off they're on these little leashes, which is very cute, and they're unlike
27:30
a little harness, and the rats just scurry around looking for mines out in
27:34
these fields. Yeah, and so once they're detected, the mouse or the
27:37
rat does its little jig and then it runs back to the researcher for a
27:41
banana snack, which I love. Hey, I found this thing, and
27:44
then they go to get a banana, and then the researchers plant flags and
27:47
get land mine detecting equipment to confirm the mind and can then get a bomb
27:51
removal team to come in disarm and remove the mine. Yes, even though
27:53
they still do use the excavation teams and the mind detection equipment, it's way
28:00
more efficient for them to have a targeted place to search than to try and
28:03
sweep an entire field. The mind sweeping game is much easier to do than
28:07
mind sweeping a mine field. Yeah for real. Yeah, and so it's
28:11
expensive, it's time consuming, and this way they can have really targeted like
28:15
these are the places we need to really look and be reasonably sure that they're
28:19
not going to encounter any minds that we're missed by the rats along the way,
28:22
Because the rats are so good at this activity. Really, the truth
28:26
is too like when you start thinking about this, these creatures are so smart
28:30
and the training itself is essentially the same thing as the TV spit samples.
28:33
What they do is they teach the rats to perform an action to earn food,
28:37
then teach them to perform those actions in the response to a specific smell
28:40
which is going to be the explosive or some kind of active ingredient in the
28:42
landmine. Yep, so very cool stuff. These heroic rats are helping to
28:48
identify disease in people that otherwise might not be detected, way more efficiently and
28:52
way cheaper than doing the other testing way, and then help save some people's
28:56
lives because they can get them on a course of treatment that before it gets
28:59
too bad, and they can go out into these fields detect land mines all
29:03
day and prevent people from being needlessly exploded by these recklessly left mines. So
29:10
pretty happy with these rats so far. I feel like I already love rats.
29:12
But I guess there's a question is there anything else that they do that
29:15
couldn't endear them more to us? In fact, there is, of course
29:19
there is, yes, Because of course there is so This is another amazing
29:25
thing. They also train rats to detect humans who have been trapped under rubble
29:29
from a collapsed structure, such as from like an earthquake or something. Yeah,
29:33
earthquakes, terrorist attacks, general wear, and terror buildings, many other
29:37
phenomenon that cause large buildings, bridges, or other human made structures to collapse
29:41
before people have had a chance to escape. These are examples of like disasters
29:45
to happen where they can bring rats in and be helpful for search rescue teams.
29:48
And now this part this is really important because finding survivors and a building
29:52
that has collapsed is extremely time sensitive. You don't have time to like wander
29:57
around looking and see maybe you'll run into someone if you're lucky. The tragedy
30:02
of these collapses is how often victims are feet or even inches sometimes from rescue,
30:07
but could not be found in time to save them because they're obscured by
30:11
all the all the stuff that's that's hiding them. There. There's a lot
30:14
going on. There's often smoke and debris, and you just like they're right
30:18
there, and even if not, they might be way back under the rubble,
30:21
but like all the more reason to like try and as efficiently as possible
30:25
pinpoint where they are so that rescue efforts can be devoted to finding them and
30:30
extracting them from that dangerous situation. Absolutely so, rats, again, with
30:33
their incredible sense of smell, their ability to squeezing the small spaces, and
30:37
their trainability, can learn to find people trapped in rubble for handlers to do
30:41
then direct extraction teams. So again, it's not necessarily that the rats are
30:45
dragging people out of the rubble. That's not what they're doing. But they're
30:48
going, hey, over here, like over here, and that's kind of
30:51
what they're doing, and that in itself is enough to save lives. Yeah,
30:55
and of course they would use dogs for something like this, but rats
30:57
have some really key advantages in this particular case, even beyond the smell.
31:02
One is that they're very small, so they can get through small spaces.
31:03
They're agile, they're fast, they're light, and they're likely to be able
31:08
to get through all those little nooks and crannies, and they're too light to
31:11
risk causing further collapse. You can imagine if you're trying to dig through it,
31:15
you might accidentally push something out of the way that was holding up a
31:17
structure that then collapses further. The rats aren't going to do that. They're
31:21
just going to squeeze through barely, making as almost as if they're not there.
31:23
They're like little furry ghosts that can pass through everything very easily. It's
31:27
kind of what they do, right. So, unlike finding landmines though,
31:32
or smelling spit samples, the rat isn't easily observed when it enters the rubble,
31:36
and when it comes out you can't easily know if it's found anything.
31:38
So these rats are equipped with adorable little vests with three D printed housing and
31:42
casing, a video camera so the handler can watch a live feed of the
31:47
rat working through the rubble, and thus the handler identifies when there is a
31:51
person trap, so the rat can just go look and search for the smell
31:55
and then have somebody kind of being a second set of eyes for them.
31:57
It's wonderful. Yeah, And they're not ending around, they're like legitimately they
32:01
hone in on the smell of a person and then they go to them.
32:05
Now, this, as far as I could tell, this is fairly recent,
32:08
Like this is the kind of research that's only been sorta like the landline
32:12
stuff has been happening for some time. Tuberculosis stuff is a little bit more
32:15
recent. This I think is the most recent the way that they've decided to
32:19
train rats to help people. And so as far as I can tell,
32:22
this has only actually been implemented in mock sort of lab settings with simulated disasters
32:28
staged. So it like they put out the rubble and they like hide stuff
32:30
in it, and so that's that kind of where they're at with the training
32:34
right now. Now they've been working on increasing the complexity of the training because
32:37
they need it to it. You gotta imagine the rats going out there.
32:40
They're not going into the sterile, clean, well organized rubble. It's going
32:45
to be chaos. And not only is there gonna be chaos, but there's
32:47
going to be a ton of distraction. There's going to be people yelling right,
32:52
There's probably gonna be sirens, drilling, there might be water or smoke.
32:58
There's gonna be all kinds of eternal stimulate that's going to make it way
33:01
more difficult and terrifying was poor little rat that they're going to encounter if they
33:06
were actually traversing the dynamic situation such as a collapse building from an earthquake.
33:09
So they're working on that level of training still, it's just it takes a
33:15
bit more time because there's so many things a rat has to be prepared to
33:17
encounter. They can't just put it in a little cage and have it like
33:21
go find someone. It's got to be in a situation that's very intense,
33:24
right, So in the training scenarios they tested rats finding a few things.
33:29
They found people clothes, plastic bags with clothes, and the rats successfully found
33:32
people eighty three percent of the time, So again super effective in what they're
33:37
doing, and much better at like other things that might just be like sift
33:43
through rubble and find person, try and listen for someone calling out, and
33:45
the other thing that they did in these experiments that was cool as they got
33:49
them to detect the difference between people who were alive and people who were deceased.
33:53
They were they were able to hone in really only primarily on the people
33:57
who were alive, and they were pretty good about doing at and that allows
34:00
them Again it's like it's not that we don't want to extract the bodies of
34:04
the people who are deceased, but like the critical thing is the people who
34:07
are still alive who need help now, and they might be unconscious or they
34:10
may be in a position with for whatever reason, they can't cry out,
34:14
and so it's imperative that the rat is able to sort of get in there.
34:16
They focus in on their pinpoint, they sort of make a bee line
34:21
to person buried under rubble, and then the person who's watching the camera can
34:24
see there's where we need to go head there right now, and they can
34:28
sort of work on their extraction in a pinpointed way that's way more efficient,
34:31
way more effective, way more likely to save people's lives. I mean,
34:36
again, another reason why you should love rats. Yes, And I can't
34:39
stress enough it's so adorable to like, look at these videos of these rats.
34:44
They're like, yeah, they're all dressed up in their like military disaster
34:47
gear and their little vests and all that, and it's just and you look
34:52
at them and you're like, I want one of those. So I think
34:54
maybe you have the temptation to get one of those rats, but I think
34:58
if you're going to spend them money on it, donate it to the organizations
35:00
that are doing this amazing, amazing work so that they can keep doing what
35:04
they're doing. And they can feed the rats, they can give them swanky
35:06
iPads and all that sort of thing and keep the system working so that lives
35:09
can be saved. I really like the idea that there's like a manufacturing plant
35:13
somewhere that got like an order for tiny vests and they were like, what
35:16
the hell is this like because they probably couldn't disclose what the research was,
35:20
and they were like, we got to train rats to wear vests, but
35:22
we need somebody to like manufacture these. Yeah, exactly. I love that
35:25
so much. Yeah, it's pretty great, all right. So, yeah,
35:28
as I said, that's kind of a shorter one. That's what we
35:30
have to say. I think for me, maintake home here is just that,
35:32
first of all, it's amazing that we can do this work. It's
35:35
amazing that humans figured out a way to leverage other animals. And the way
35:39
they do it is the sort of cooperative relationship. The rats do get something
35:45
out of this. It has to be voluntary engagement, and so they do
35:47
it because they get to earn a food reward. And the people really celebrate
35:52
these rats. They're really they love the fact that these rats are so helpful
35:54
and so good, and so there are a lot of experiments around the world
35:59
that use animals in this way and they have to euthanize them afterward, and
36:02
I didn't I didn't think to check on that for this for and researching this
36:06
topic. I really hope they're not euthanizing these rats when they're done saving a
36:09
bunch of people's lives, right, Hopefully they get to live out their lives
36:13
in like a cushy little cage where they you know, or large arena where
36:15
they can sort of run around and get all the food that they want and
36:17
be fat and happy. I'm not sure. I mean, the rules and
36:21
regulations are probably different in Tanzania and other countries, but I hope that they
36:24
treat them humanely when they've sort of at the end of their service that they
36:28
didn't really sign up for. But they do get treated well while while they're
36:30
there. What one hundred percent, if a rat retires from bomb sniffing or
36:34
tuberculosis smelling or rubble exploring, I will adopt it. Indeed. Yeah,
36:40
reach out to us for the ex military bomb sniffing rats for the Popo group.
36:47
Yeah, send them to the vegans. Yeah exactly, We'll hang out
36:50
with them. It'd be cool. Yeah, it'd be great. I think
36:52
my big takeaway is just like this is another example of how behavior science is
36:55
super powerful and how it can be helpful, and how it can be simple,
36:59
like doesn't need to be some like really like stated the art technology.
37:02
Maybe that will be helpful later and continue to do that, but like,
37:06
the behavior science exists now, and it's powerful, and it's far more effective
37:10
than some of the things that are being done already. So there's no reason
37:14
why we shouldn't consider this as a possible option, if not an effective option,
37:17
for life saving assessments or life saving things. I mean, I think
37:22
it's just a pretty incredible from that regard. That's actually a really good point,
37:24
And so I'm going to piggyback on that just a little bit because,
37:27
just as you said, one of the reasons this is so important is because
37:31
a lot of these countries they can't afford some of the high tech stuff.
37:36
And like, maybe high tech stuff will come down the road, maybe some
37:38
super philanthropist will donate a lot of that to these people, But in the
37:42
meantime, they have a tool at their disposal that is the most accurate,
37:45
cheapest thing that they can have, and it's easy to use and it's efficient.
37:50
It's mad efficient, Like they're so good at what they do so quickly,
37:53
and like they work for actual peanuts, I mean banana mash. But
37:57
you know what I'm saying, right, it's just the coolest thing, like
37:59
just so like love to celebrate the fact that this is even a thing that
38:02
exists and that I think is one of those solutions that actually is very meaningful
38:07
for people who don't have the sort of financial income or the resources to do
38:10
any other way. And honestly, like they kind of don't need you right
38:13
now, right exactly exactly. All right, Well, we should definitely give
38:17
some recommendations, but I would like to say that this episode is brought to
38:21
you by the sweat, tears and hard work done by the why we do
38:23
what we do crew. But let's give credit to the advertisers. All right,
38:35
we've been talking about rats, We've been talking about tuberculosis and landmines and
38:38
collapsed buildings. Let's talk about recommendations. Yes, let's do it. Recommendations.
38:52
I am recommending an album. It's kind of old now, it's man
38:54
coming up on twenty years old. Oh my god, I know this is
38:58
a band called say Us. I think it was their second album, maybe
39:01
the first full length. It was self titled to just called say Usin and
39:05
man, I just I've been listening to this album a lot lately. It
39:07
came out in two thousand and six. But is just is just gold the
39:10
whole thing from top to bottom. It's fantastic. Really enjoy it. So
39:14
you can probably find it out there on all streaming services. Go look out
39:16
for say Usin S A O S I N if you're interested in it.
39:21
I just really love this album. Good rock album, just awesome melodies,
39:24
awesome harmonies, all kinds of good stuff. Yeah, super interesting. This
39:27
isn't it is just the one after Anthony Green left? Or is this the
39:30
one with Anthony Green? It's after he left and before he came back,
39:35
right right, you're right, I forgot there is like a brief period where
39:37
he was back to Yeah. Yeah, great band, super super interesting musicality
39:42
and stuff. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, they're they're they're weird,
39:45
but they're great. The good drummer really good. Yes, yeah.
39:47
Yeah. So mine is the fifth book in a series of books that is
39:51
just a wild Time and the book is Heretics of Dune, which is the
39:54
fifth book out of the original Dude series, which is made of six books
39:59
from Frank Herber and then two from a son that were supposed to be like
40:01
the ends equal. But okay, well, I would say, like,
40:05
read start with Doune obviously, because by the time you get to this one,
40:08
you are nearly five thousand years in the future, a worm god has
40:14
died, and now there are sex switches that are trying to take over the
40:19
universe with their vaginas. It's a wild time. It's a wild there's clones,
40:23
there's it's a whole thing. Excellent wild time, wonderful story, super
40:29
interesting philosophy. I just I was like, you are recommending this, right,
40:32
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm one other recommending this. I would
40:36
say, though, you just have to you have to be ready to dive
40:38
into a world that is just you have to accept it, is what I'm
40:42
saying. Do you need to read the first four books before you get to
40:45
this one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you need to read the first
40:47
four books because it's just none of it will make sense. It will arguably
40:52
not make sense when you get into the fifth book. When you get there,
40:55
but it is a great and interesting and very unique Uni Verse for sci
41:00
fi like there's nothing like it, fun and super cool. It makes me
41:02
want to like eat the spice melange because it all apparently smells like cinnamon.
41:07
Okay, deal, Yeah, it's great. That's awesome. I love that
41:10
all right, Kay? Yeah, we finished this kind of efficiently. Hope
41:13
you enjoyed our path down Hero rats Ali. I don't know what's called that,
41:16
but it was. It's been fun, at least for me. Yeah,
41:20
it's great. If you liked this episode and you would like to support
41:22
us, as I said, you can join us on patren. If you
41:24
do, you get all kinds of bonus stuff. And actually we're running a
41:27
campaign. If we get extra people, or if we get up to fifteen
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people, then we'll do a virtual hangout with y'all. You can ask us
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casual and all that sort of thing. Trying to get that by June or
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to that, if you have other ideas you'd like to see available as a
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perk for joining patron let us know, like we're open to suggestions on that.
41:53
Patren supporters talk about you in a second. Yeah, you sortainly can
41:57
do that thing too, and I'll post that there was all fun stuff over
42:00
there. We also have some merch for sale. I don't know people who
42:02
like to buy podcast merch. I have bought podcast merch, so maybe you're
42:06
one of those people. And if you are into that sort of thing.
42:07
We've got some good stuff over on our website. It doesn't just have our
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name on all of it either, some of it does, but you knows
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you can have virtu our website. You can also find more about our episodes
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by going there, although a little behind them posting all of the episodes that
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you can find a bunch of information. Yeah, we'll get there. Yeah.
42:28
Yeah. In addition, you can also just leaving reading interview, subscribe
42:30
to a friend. All that good stuff. And for all the people who
42:34
have already supported us on Patreon, we thank you so much. I'd like
42:37
to say thank you to Mike m Megan, Layla, Mike T, Justin,
42:39
Kim, Joshua, The Daily BA, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia and
42:44
Brian. Thank you guys so much. You're the best and we really appreciate
42:46
you. Yes, you rule, you're the best ever. Of course,
42:50
thank you for listening. Everyone who's out there, we probably would speak to
42:52
an open, empty arena of nobody's, but still we're more happy that you
42:58
are there with us on this journey. If you like to tell us anything
43:00
about hero Rats or about the Dune series or rock bands from the early aughts
43:06
that you're interested in, or landmines or tuberculosis or collapsed buildings, you should
43:09
definitely email us. You can reach us at info at WWDWWD podcast dot com.
43:15
Audio production, mixing and all of the good audio stuff that you hear
43:17
is courtesy of Justin. Our writers and fact checkers are Jess, Shane and
43:22
myself, And thank you so much for recording with me today. Shane always
43:27
as a rare evening recording for us. Yeah, No, it's fun.
43:30
Is there anything that I missed or anything you'd like to add before we wrap
43:31
up? No, just thank you all for being here and we look forward
43:35
to the next like one thousand episodes of order to keep doing indeed all right
43:38
perfect. Then this is Abraham and this is Shane. We're out. See
43:42
up. You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do. You can
43:45
learn more about this and other episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast dot com.
43:52
Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day