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Dogs’ amazing noses are saving lives both human and animal
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It has always been a well known fact that dogs’ noses are much more powerful than ours. They sniff out drugs, bombs, arson evidence, and criminals. They track humans to help find the lost and even sniff out bodies for law enforcement. But now, they are making inroads in sniffing where few noses dare to smell.
The latest sniffing dogs include sewer sniffing dogs sniffing for illegal sewer connections, orca dung sniffing dogs, cancer sniffing dogs, prison cell phone sniffing dogs, and dogs who sniff out pythons in Florida’s Everglades.
Then there are dogs who sniff out mold, termites, and other toxins in homes and businesses. Sniffer dogs have also been enlisted to find bumblebee nests in the UK. The Bumblebee Conservation Trust has trained Toby, a Springer Spaniel, to detect the colonies, assisting them with the conservation of threatened species.
Scientist Sam Wasser, Ph.D. and his team at The University of Washington Center for Conservation Biology have dogs trained to sniff out the scat of puma, wolf, caribou, moose, and more. One dog sniffs out dung in two-foot-deep Canadian snow!
In addition to sniffing out waste products from various animals, Dr. Wasser’s team uses the dogs to conduct canine-based scent matching work to replace expensive DNA analyses used to assign individual identity to wildlife scat. They have trained their dogs to match scat samples collected from the same individual in order to reduce or eliminate the time and financial costs of the DNA analyses. In other words, the dogs not only sniff out puma dung, they can actually recognize the dung from a specific animal!
Python Pete, a cute little Beagle, is a python sniffing dog helping Florida wildlife officials find and trap invasive Burmese pythons. Abandoned in the swamp by irresponsible pet owners, these snakes can grow to 400 pounds and exceed 20 feet in length, while eating prey needed by native animals. (Some folks might remember the python that exploded after trying to eat an alligator.)
As the Center for Conservation Biology’s website states: “The ideal detection dog has an excessive, highly focused play drive. They live to play fetch. These dogs happily work all day long, motivated by the expectation of a tennis ball play reward upon sample detection. The obsessive, high-energy personalities of detection dogs also make them difficult to maintain as pets. As a result, they frequently find themselves abandoned to animal shelters, facing euthanasia.” The Center and other trainers rescue these dogs and offer them a satisfying career in research, conservation, and more.
All in all, dogs and their fantastic sense of smell are doing amazing things to help both humans and animals live safer, longer, healthier lives.
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