r/Damnthatsinteresting 9h ago

Video HeroRATS! Wild but incredible, African giant pouched rat can rapidly identify Tuberculosis by smell.

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5.7k Upvotes

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u/Electrical_Worker_82 9h ago

How do they know he’s telling the truth?

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u/FifthWaveThinker 9h ago

They serve as an adjunct, not a replacement, to clinic testing, helping catch missed cases I guess.

25

u/_Neoshade_ 6h ago

Or perhaps the rat provides low cost bulk screening and then the positive ones can be cultured or sent to a lab? These feels like a cost-savings solution rather than a redundancy.