Rats trained to sniff out soil poisoned by oil and chemicals
African giant pouched rats can detect oil and chemicals in soil. This offers a potential alternative to lab testing.
Researchers are training African giant pouched rats to detect petroleum in contaminated soil. Professor Paul Nathanail is a soil contamination expert at not-for-profit APOPO.
Professor Paul Nathanail presented this research at the CleanUp 2026 conference in Adelaide. Rats can learn scent-detection tasks in just a few months.
They may be more accurate than labs in some cases. Soil samples can degrade during transport.
A study published in January tested six trained rats. The rats correctly identified contaminated samples while rejecting clean soil.
The next phase will test which hydrocarbons to target. It will also test how low a concentration rats can reliably detect.
APOPO already deploys trained rats across Africa, Asia and South America to detect landmines and tuberculosis.
- Few months
- Training time needed
- Africa, Asia and South America
- APOPO coverage
- Over 170,000 in 11 countries
- Landmines destroyed
Why it mattersPortable contamination testing could help communities quickly identify and fix soil pollution. It works without expensive lab testing or long delays.
AustraliaResearch presented in Adelaide could lead to faster, cheaper ways to assess contaminated industrial sites and abandoned land across Australia.
Corroborated bythenightly.com.au
✓ Claims checked against the source and corrected before publish. checked 8 d ago
