[dtsykunov]

> Magawa retired from bomb sniffing in June 2021 owing to his old age, as is standard for APOPO's HeroRATs.

> He spent a number of weeks mentoring 20 newly-recruited rats before ultimately retiring to a life of "snacking on bananas and peanuts".

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

End to life worthy of being envied.

[caseyohara]

I love that Magawa's wikipedia article is structured just like a human: Early Life, Career, Retirement and Death.

A few weeks ago when "Croatia declared free of landmines after 31 years" was posted here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189535), I rabbit holed wikipedia about landmine-sniffing animals. It's such a fascinating topic.

[beAbU]

Just missing the "controversies" and "personal life" sections!

[frereubu]

"Alleged embezzlement of soft fruit"

[SilentM68]

Ah, RatKablooey. Yeah, that’s the nickname they gave the old bomb-sniffing rat. Guy was a legend… or at least, that’s what the reports said. His “bomb count” was so high, even the military started double-checking the math when his stats became too explosive for the spreadsheet. Rumor has it that half the “bombs he found” were just suspiciously shaped cheese wrappers. Retired with a medal, a tiny cape, and a lifetime supply of peanuts. Still shows up at reunions, mostly to argue about the “official count,” and reminisce with his old field commander, Agent Cody Banks.

[cobbzilla]

8 years is an extraordinarily long lifespan for a rat, isn’t it? And he got a lot done!!

[jomar]

Apparently it's about as expected for a southern giant pouched rat. But he was indeed a particularly good one!

[poulpy123]

They are not the same species than rats and mice longers

[gavmor]

How does one rat mentor another?

[sonofhans]

You can teach a kid to change a tire without saying a word. It’s the same thing. Rats are very smart and very social. Rats that were good at teaching Rathood to their little ones had more that survived.

Put food in a maze and I’m sure rats would teach other rats how to get it. I expect this is similar.

[lostlogin]

Our dog learned to find tennis balls by smell off a dog that was good at it. This was after me one walk with this dog.

Every trip to the park got us a few.

Then he ate one and have himself a bowel obstruction and me a great enthusiasm for pet insurance.

[thinkingtoilet]

Rats are intelligent social mammals. They teach by actions. Imagine training a dog. You have two dogs, one trained and one not. You say "sit" and the trained dog sits and you give it a treat. The non-trained dog will quickly pick up on that.

[dtsykunov]

My guess, first they send them links to confluence wiki.

[fmbb]

All deprecated pages with outdated info of course. But the comments have links to Slack threads about the incorrect info.

[pimlottc]

“Feel free to update the wiki to correct anything you find that’s outdated”

[teekert]

When I was young I saw a rat mentor 4 turtles!

[yzydserd]

Human in the loop reinforcement learning

[mrandish]

More specifically, fruit in the loop reinforcement learning.

[cobbzilla]

imitation learning is widespread among animals including many nonhuman species

[tedmiston]

RatGPT