[lukan]

Can drones sniff explosives? I think that would be very expensive, they can have metal detectors, and mark suspicious sites for someone (or something, like a different digging drone) else to check.

But rats can sniff explosives and do so succesfully.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magawa

[TiredOfLife]

The flying ones can use thermal cameras. The mines and surrounding areas change temperature differently.

Then the ground ones do the actual demining.

[lukan]

But this only works for mines not or only lightly covered by earth I assume?

There has been lots of rain falling from the sky, moving earth, since the mines were laid.

[ultratalk]

> He spent a number of weeks mentoring 20 newly-recruited rats

How does that work for a rat? Sounds interesting.

[lukan]

I don't know how it works for rats, but I assume it is like with dogs. If you have already a trained dog, you make the same exercises with the trained and the untrained dog, so the untrained dog can just watch what the trained dog does and imitate it.

[widforss]

That's not how you would typically train a working dog.

[lukan]

I imagine it depends on the work?

I am not an expert here, but am a bit familiar with how rescue dogs are trained and this is a method in use.