Jim McMahon

A medal awarded this fall lauded the “lifesaving bravery and devotion to duty” for work detecting land mines in Cambodia. Its recipient: a 5-year-old African giant rat named Magawa. Using his acute sense of smell and excellent memory, Magawa is trained to sniff out the chemical compound in explosives and signal to his handler when he finds something. He can search an area the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes, a job that can take a human with a metal detector about four days. And unlike humans, Magawa’s too light to set off a mine, so there’s minimal risk of injury. Over the past four years, the rat has discovered 39 land mines and 28 pieces of unexploded ordnance, which are left over from the Vietnam War and internal conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s. Magawa is the first rat to receive the award, which is given out by a British charity, People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals. “Every discovery he makes,” says Jan McLoughlin, the charity’s director general, “reduces the risk of injury or death for local people.”