Research in South Africa showing that elephants can identify explosives by smell follows a long tradition of such experiments.
Dogs are commonly used to sniff out explosives, contraband and other illegal items. A group called APOPO had such good results with trained rats that it has deployed them to detect mines in Angola and Mozambique and uses them in Tanzania to screen people for tuberculosis by evaluating sputum samples.
In Croatia, where mines were left from the 1990s Balkan wars, researchers noted that bees gathered at pots containing a sugar solution mixed with TNT, though the insects have not been used for de-mining.
"There's never an intention that we're going to use elephants on the battlefield," Lee said. The goal, he said, is to learn how an elephant smells and incorporate that knowledge into electronic sensors.
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Some animals have turned mine fields into "de facto wildlife preserves," mostly avoiding mines in areas where people fear to tread, commentator Michael Moore wrote in January in his blog, "Landmines in Africa."
"Land mines do not protect habitats, merely demonstrate the importance of guaranteeing safe and secure habitats for all species," Moore wrote.