Giant rats are being trained to sniff out landmines in Tanzania.

　　Their trainers at Tanzania's Sokoine University of Agriculture say the African pouched rats can do a much better job than dogs.

　　　 Christophe Cox is the Belgian co-ordinator of a project that is training 300 rats to locate mines by recognising the smell of dynamite and TNT.

　　He said: "Rats are good, clever to learn, small, like performing repeated tasks and have a better sense of smell than dogs."

　　One reason the animals are useful in detecting mines is that despite their description as "giant" rats, they are small enough, about 30 inches long to scamper across a minefield without setting off the charges.

　　The African rats roused fears about the import of exotic pets into the US last April after it was discovered that the virus causing monkeypox had probably been transferred from the rats, which had been shipped from Ghana, to the prairie dogs with whom they shared cages in pet shops.

　　But Cox says he knows of no connection between the rats in Tanzania and the outbreak of disease in the US.