Super-hero sniffer mice that could save lives with a twitch of their nose are being bred by scientists.
 

The ‘danger mice’ have been genetically modified so that their noses are hundreds of times more sensitive to the scent of explosives than house mice.
 

In future, they could be deployed to countries scarred by war to rapidly sniff out landmines, which are then cleared by a human handler.

 

One of the mice in study during training, when they hone their skills with DNT, a chemical cousin of TNT that is safe to work with the lab.
 

Although the project - funded by the US government’s health research arm - may sound rather off-the-wall, the idea of super-sniffer rodents is not without precedent.
 

A Belgian charity already uses giant African rats to sniff out TNT and has deployed them in Mozambique and Tanzania and on the Thai-Burmese border.
 

 However, while the HeroRATs, as they are called, are very good at their job, it takes nine months of painstaking work to train them to detect TNT.
 

The Society for Neuroscience’s annual conference in New Orleans heard that the answer could be to use genetic modification to bypass the need for this extensive training.

 

The mice are trained to have noses 500 times more sensitive to TNT

 

Researchers believe mice could be bred to sniff for landmines, which a chip under their skin alerting handlers when they find traces of TNT
 

Using GM technology, scientists at the City University of New York have created mice that have up to 500 times more of nose cells that detect TNT-like chemicals.
 

Researcher Charlotte D’Hulst  said: ‘The rats are very effective but mice have some advantages as mine detectors because they are cheaper to manage and house and easier to breed.’ 
 

In addition, it is relatively easy to manipulate the key cells in the mouse nose.
 

It is hoped that the animals’ inbuilt sensitivity to TNT-like chemicals means they will not have to be trained. Instead, they will naturally home in on explosives.
 

Possibilities include planting a chip under their skin that will sense changes in their behaviour that indicate that they have spotted a mine.