Rats The Size Of Small Dogs

[Mr Lee]

I have seen some bigger than that in New York years ago, so I can see it now, people walking their rats on a leash in the Philippines to check out visitors to see if they have TB before allowing them into their homes.  :mocking:  I wonder how many people would want them around as pets? And they are good for land mines too.  Could a giant, spit-sniffing rat save your life? Maybe — they can be better than humans at diagnosing tuberculosis. A pilot program in Tanzania is using trained rats to smell TB in sputum samples. Up to 1,000 samples a week are collected from local hospitals by APOPO, a nonprofit that also trains rats to sniff out landmines. Although the TB samples have already been checked by a human under the microscope, the rat pack’s sniff tests have improved disease detection by 44 percent because the clever rodents often find TB that was missed. Dog-sized rats sniff out TB in patients