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'Hero rat' wins gold medal from UK charity for hunting landmines

Magawa, an African giant pouched rat, was given a gold medal by the British veterinary charity People's Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) for his work detecting undetonated landmines in Cambodia.

Decades of conflict have left the Southeast Asian country littered with millions of landmines, unexploded ordnance (UXO), and other explosive remnants of war that still kill or injure dozens of people each year.

Cambodia, with assistance from other countries, has spent years slowly clearing the land of explosives, but it's difficult and dangerous work.

This is where Magawa comes in.

Magawa was trained by non-governmental organization APOPO (which in Dutch stands for "Anti-Persoonsmijnen Ontmijnende Product Ontwikkeling," or in English, Anti-Personnel Landmines Detection Product Development).

The organization, which was founded in Belgium and is headquartered in Tanzania, trains rats like Magawa to detect the scent of the explosive chemicals used in landmines and point them out to their handlers.