Magawa
Magawa is a giant pouched rat , as minesweepers was used. She was awarded the PDSA Gold Medal in 2020 .
background
Magawa was born on November 25, 2013 in Morogoro , Tanzania and trained to be a minesweeper in Cambodia . In Cambodia, she sensed a total of 71 landmines in the service of the Belgian aid organization Apopoand contributed to the defusing of 38 unexploded explosive devices. Together with other animals, she searched an area of more than 225,000 square meters. The rat weighs 1.2 kilograms and is 70 cm long. This meant that it could not trigger any mines, but it was large enough to alert mine defusers to landmines. For an area the size of a tennis court, it took about 20 minutes. A mine defuser with a metal detector would need one to four days for the same field size.
For this achievement, she was awarded the gold medal in Great Britain by the animal rights organization People's Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) in 2020 . The significance of this award is compared to the Cross of St. George , the highest civil order in the United Kingdom.
Almost nine months after receiving the award and after a total of five years in the service of Apopo, it was announced on June 5, 2021 that the rat was about to retire. Although she was still in the best of health, she finally got a little tired.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Klaus Hillenbrand: Mine rat Magawa retires: A heroic rat . In: The daily newspaper: taz . June 6, 2021, ISSN 0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed June 7, 2021]).
- ↑ a b Giant hamster rat "Magawa": Highest animal order for minesweeper rats in Cambodia. In: time online . September 25, 2020, accessed June 6, 2021 .
- ↑ a b Magawa the hero rat retires from job detecting landmines. In: BBC News. June 4, 2021, accessed June 6, 2021 .
- ↑ Cambodia: Landmine Tracker Magawa is retiring after five years. In: Spiegel.de. June 5, 2021, accessed June 6, 2021 .
- ↑ Magawa the mine-sniffing rat ends career in Cambodia on a high. In: The Guardian. June 5, 2021, accessed June 6, 2021 .