May 21
Did you know that some giant rats are actually hospital heroes? In some parts of the world where fancy medical labs are hard to find, doctors need help figuring out if a person has a bad lung sickness called tuberculosis (TB). So, scientists trained African giant pouched rats to help! These rats have an incredible sense of smell, and they are trained to sniff out the exact scent of the sickness in patient samples. What would take a human doctor with a microscope several days to check, these "HeroRATs" can sniff through in just a few minutes! When they smell the sickness, they scratch at the sample to tell the doctors, helping sick people get the medicine they need super fast!
