QUIRKY WORLD ... I smell a rat — and that rat smells a deadly mine

CAMBODIA: Pit, only two and with just one eye, needed only 11 minutes before he detected a deadly mine buried in a Cambodian field, work that humans with metal detectors could have taken up to five days to investigate.

Pit is not human. He is part of a team of elite rats, imported from Africa, that Cambodia is training to sniff out landmines that still dot the countryside after decades of conflict.

“Under a clear sky, he would have been quicker,” said Hul Sokheng, a veteran Cambodian deminer, who oversees training of 12 handlers on how to work with 15 large rats to clear Cambodia’s farmland and rural villages of bombs. “These are life-saving rats,” he said.