Mice can save lives by finding earthquake victims among the rubble

Researchers have successfully trained mice to detect landmines, sniff out tuberculosis and even drive cars, but the next challenge — finding survivors in a collapsed building — may be their bravest yet. We spoke to Dr. Donna Kane, a behavioral researcher at APOPO, an organization that has pioneered training mice to save lives.

Why mice?

They can contribute something that other technologies cannot, at least in the areas where we train them. Their sense of smell and ability to train are on par with dogs. But it’s the mice’s small size that really makes the difference.

At APOPO, we work with a packed Giant African Rat [Cricetomys ansorgei]. We taught rats to spot landmines, because they are too small, too light, and cannot detonate a landmine. We teach them to spot the scent of illegally smuggled wildlife in shipping ports, because they can reach containers stacked on top of each other.

As for my research on training mice for search and rescue, the main reason is that they can get into tight, small areas of the wreck site. Usually the search and rescue dogs roam around the wreck sites, while hopefully the mice can actually get in, through all the ruins, because they are so small.

Any application should be a response to a human challenge, and it should need the unique abilities of our rats to help. If there is already [other] Available technology, and at an affordable price, we wouldn’t be training our rats just for the fun of it.

How do you train a mouse to do these things?

We use positive reinforcement to train them in the basic sequence of behaviour. So here to look for a human, explain to us that they found it, and then go back to the place from which they were released.

[Training] It starts in a really basic environment: a small empty room. Then we gradually expand and increase the complexity so that it is more like real life. We can start adding debris and making the training area look like an actual collapsed construction site.

Dr. Donna Kane with Joe, a rat being trained in search and rescue © APOPO

What happens when they find someone?

They need to turn a switch, which makes noise. Currently, we put them in a jacket with a small ball on its collar, which has a micro key. The mice are trained to pull the ball when they find someone, triggering the micro switch and beeping.

Pulling the ball is not a natural behavior for them, but they can be trained in a process we call shaping. We start by putting the jacket with the ball on them. Rats are naturally very curious, so when the ball is hanging there, you can see that it’s kind of like, “What’s that?”

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In the beginning, we only boost them when touching the ball at all. Then, as is the norm for shaping, you’ll stop strengthening just by touching until they realize, “Oh, I’m not strong anymore.” Then they will try harder [to get the reward]. This usually leads them to pull the ball, and we really have to reward them quickly, so they know this is the target behaviour. Then, in a similar way, we can shape it until it’s pulled for two to three seconds, so it’s a really strong signal for us.

Of course, in the field we will not be able to see or hear mice. So, we are working with a group of engineers to develop a multifunctional backpack that will hook up to our computer, so that we can be notified when the mice pull the ball. We will be able to find out exactly where they are, because the backpacks must also have a location transmitter.

How can they distinguish between those who are alive and those who are not?

We’ve talked about this a lot, because we’re only going to be training with living people and we don’t know how they’ll interact with corpses until they’re in a real scenario. However, dog trainers have told us that the smell characteristics of a living person, compared to a dead person, are very different. Dogs can distinguish between a living and a dead person about three to four hours after death.

We thought maybe we should train the mice to use some kind of scent we might be able to get – it’s hard to tell what to call it, but we’ll need to smell death, basically.

But the dog trainers tell us we don’t have to do that, because the smell changes between the living and the dead is so different, it’s not a problem.

During training, rats wear a jacket with a small key inside a ball that has been taught to pull when they find a victim © APOPO

When are these mice in the field?

We just started training in August 2021, and we still have to do training trials outside of the research environment. We work with a search and rescue group called GEA, which is based in Turkey, an earthquake-prone country. Hopefully by next year we can take mice to Turkey for experiments there, but in terms of going to real disaster sites, real collapsed buildings…it’s very hard to tell.

APOPO’s landmine research began in 1998, and its first operational trials were conducted in 2003 and 2004. Our research to detect tuberculosis began in 2003, and mice began operating in 2007. These projects cost, on average, about 6000 euro [roughly £5,175] To fully train one mouse until it is operational.

We are currently training seven people for search and rescue, although they will have to take turns using one backpack!

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