Teaching giant african pouched rats to find landmines: operant conditioning with real consequences - PubMed (original) (raw)

Teaching giant african pouched rats to find landmines: operant conditioning with real consequences

Alan Poling et al. Behav Anal Pract. 2010 Fall.

Abstract

Giant African pouched rats recently have been used as mine-detection animals in Mozambique. To provide an example of the wide range of problems to which operant conditioning procedures can be applied and to illustrate the common challenges often faced in applying those procedures, this manuscript briefly describes how the rats are trained and used operationally. To date, the rats have performed well and it appears they can play a valuable role in humanitarian demining.

Keywords: animal training; giant African pouched rats; humanitarian demining; landmines; operant conditioning; operant discrimination training.

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