Giant rat wins Guinness World Record for landmine detection in Cambodia

A giant African rat, has been honored this week with the Guinness Award, for having detected the most landmines in Cambodia. His name is Ronin, he is 5 years old and between August 2021 and February 2025, he alone discovered 109 landmines, along with 15 unexploded ordnance.

This was reported on X by the non-governmental organization APOPO, which employs a hundred rodents for this task in this Southeast Asian country.

The previous holder of this distinction was another "HeroRAT" as the project calls them. Magawa retired in May 2021 with a total of 71 mines (plus 38 unexploded ordnance) discovered over nearly five years. He died a year later.

The organization-which has cleared nearly 170,000 mines in several countries since its founding in 1997-said the achievement highlights "the abilities of these humble animals, often viewed in a negative light."

Cambodia is one of the nations most affected by landmines

Cambodia is one of the most landmine-affected nations in the world after Burma and Afghanistan. According to studies, up to six million are believed to have been laid during the armed conflicts that ravaged the country between 1975 and 1998, of which hundreds of thousands have yet to be located.

Other estimates by international organizations warn that abandoned mines have caused tens of thousands of casualties in the country, which has the highest number of landmine amputees per capita in the world: more than 40,000 amputees for a population of 17 million.

APOPO, a pioneer in teaching African giant rats

APOPO has pioneered a program that teaches African giant pouched rats (Cricetomys ansorgei) in these tasks. The project has been carried out in close collaboration with the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania, where all the rats are born and raised. There are currently 104 active rodent recruits.

Since Bart Weetjens founded APOPO in the late 1990s, the project has cleared a staggering 169,713 landmines and other explosives in war-affected regions of Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia.