It's never easy being the ambassador of rats. After all, there's that hairless tail.
In spite of the bad press, Runa is doing her best to promote rats at three zoos in the U.S. She is one of a handful of these ambassadors. The rats were provided by a Tanzanian organization that is training African giant pouched rats to fight wildlife trafficking, detect diseases, and perform other useful tasks.
African giant pouched rats like Runa are at least twice as large as urban brown rats. They are best known for ferreting out landmines and explosives on old battlefields in Angola, Mozambique and Cambodia, earning them the nickname "hero rats." It is planned to use their keen sense of smell to locate people trapped in collapsed buildings, detect diseases in lab samples, and detect illegal goods at ports and airports.
A group of six African rats spent the first month working in the field in March, detecting smuggled goods, such as pangolins, at a port in Tanzania. Poachers fend for the scaly anteater, which is among the most traded animals on earth. Its meat is considered a delicacy in Vietnam and some parts of China, and its scales are used in traditional Chinese medicine.