The giant rats sniffing out unexploded landmines in a war-torn nation - The rats are about the same size as a Chihuahua ...

The African giant pouched rats, which can grow up to 45 centimeters (around 18 inches) and weigh up to 1.5 kilograms (more than 3 pounds), are on the front line, making their way nimbly across fields ...

An ultra-rare gigantic rat so big that it puts New York City's subway-dwelling rodents to shame has been caught on camera for the first time. Uromys vika, a giant rat known for being "one of the ...

Eight giant African pouched rats were able to detect four wildlife samples from 146 non-target items during this four-year study. Hotspots ranked Start the day smarter ☀️ Funniest cap messages ...

A giant rat that wasn't suited for its bomb-sniffing job gets a new role A Gambian rat who was training to be a landmine detector arrived at the San Diego Zoo a few weeks ago. She's better suited ...

African giant pouched rats have been trained to identify pangolin scales, elephant ivory and other items from at-risk species, researchers report October 30 in Frontiers in Conservation Science.

Weighing more than two pounds and growing up to 1.5 feet long, the Vangunu giant rat (Uromys vika) is about four times larger than city rats scurrying through alleys and dumpsters the world over.

Between 2010 and 2015, Tyrone Lavery and his colleagues searched tree hollows and set up camera traps and aluminum boxes. They were trying to capture evidence of the Vangunu giant rat, Uromys vika.

Then in 2015, Dr. Lavery obtained the first DNA sample from a Vika rat that had died after loggers cut down a tree it was living in. He compared the DNA and the skull to other rodents from ...