‘Hero rat’ Magawa retires from Cambodian bomb sniffing career

Award-winning seven-year-old rodent has detected 71 landmines and 38 items of unexploded ordnance, his employers say.

Magawa, an award-winning giant African pouched rat, is retiring after five years of sniffing out land mines and unexploded ordnance in Cambodia. The seven-year-old rodent, originally from Tanzania, was trained by the Belgian charity APOPO which says Magawa helped clear mines from 225,000 square metres of land in his career, the equivalent of 42 football pitches. But after detecting 71 landmines and 38 items of unexploded ordnance “he is getting a bit tired,” Michael Heiman, the charity’s programme manager in Cambodia, told AFP news agency on Saturday.