What Happened to the Days When Rats Just Hung Out in Sewers Spreading Disease?

Scientists have come up with a way of genetically modifying mice so that they can detect land mines.  This is great news as well as further proof that scientists shouldn't be left alone with too much time on their hands.

Amazing though this news undeniably is it will be just another day in the office for a Belgian company that has been training mine sniffing rats for years.  The rat of choice is the African giant pouched rat which is easy to maintain (its a rat for god's sake, its not like its a finicky eater) and lives for a respectable six to eight years which means you don't have to replace them too often (unless you make them work when they have a head cold).  Another advantage rats have over mine sniffing dogs, for example, is that they don't bond with a particular handler, they work solely for the food.  Or to put it another way they're mercenary little bastards so you needn't feel too upset if they occasionally find a mine the hard way.  It's difficult to tell whether this is a mine clearance technique or a little belated revenge for the black death.  Today's forecast; cloudy with a chance of rat.

The same type of rat is also used to detect tuberculosis.  Jesus, are these guys death magnets or what?  The procedure is much the same, the rats are trained to detect tuberculosis bacteria in sputum samples.  When a successful identification is made the rats are withdrawn and the sufferer is detonated in a controlled explosion.

So why, since we appear to be waist deep in mine sniffing rodents, did somebody decide to genetically engineer a perfectly acceptable mouse to do the same job?  The answer lies in the training time.  Not being as stupid as humans rats do not normally bugger about with high explosives.  It takes approximately eight months training to get a rat to the point where it can do anything useful in a minefield.  Breeding an animal with a predilection for TNT (the most common ingredient in land mines) from the get go cuts down the lead in time.

So; to summarise.  We are breeding genetically enhanced versions of an animal we have been utterly incapable of getting rid of in order to replace another animal we can't seem to wipe out to assist us in locating randomly scattered explosives which were scattered by us.  It is getting increasingly difficult to believe that we are the highest lifeform on the planet although it could be pointed out that we haven't got to the point where rats are training us to clear minefields.  Still, I can't help wondering what is going to happen to all of the redundant rats that now find themselves unemployed and possessed of a working familiarity with explosives.  This can't go badly wrong at all can it?