How are rats being trained?
APOPO uses a combination of click-training and food rewarding. As such, the rats work for food, and their performance is positively rewarded. Training starts at the age of 5 weeks – when juveniles are weaned from the mother. At first, the animals are nursed for a week by the care takers in order to get used to humans. Then, they are taught to associate the clicking sound with a food reward. After that, they have to perform certain tasks to get this food reward. After odour imprint, the complexity of their tasks is gradually increased.
