What do you
do when you arrive in an airport – at Helsinki, after collecting their luggage,
arriving international passengers are asked to dab their skin with a wipe. In a
separate booth, the beaker containing the wipe is then placed next to others
containing different control scents .. .. ..
baffling !!
The picture
took the Twitter by storm. A tan dog in
a tactical vest, sitting up at the position of attention, perky ears framing a
black face. The mouth wide open, the tongue hanging out the side of the mouth,
the dog looks happy, almost goofy.
It was
tweeted by the US President Donald Trump – and it was the dog that chased
down ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in late October, leading to al-Baghdadi's
death when he detonated a suicide vest he was wearing. The “wonderful” Belgian Malinois was injured in the
blast, but has since returned to duty. Assigned to Delta Force, the dog's
identity is classified, even as the dog is being hailed as a hero, and named Conan.
Dogs have an incredible
sense of smell which have made them useful in the detection of diseases for
decades. The complex folded structure of
their nasal cavity - which results in a huge surface area - is home to over
300million scent receptors compared to 5milllion in a human, according to
researchers at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). A detection dog or sniffer dog is a dog that
is trained to use its senses to detect substances such as explosives, illegal
drugs, wildlife scat, currency, blood, and contraband electronics such as
illicit mobile phones. The sense most used by detection dogs is smell. The
smell from the detection dogs are more enhanced than the average dog. They are
trained to have this great sense of smell. A police dog is essentially a detection dog
that is used as a resource for police in specific scenarios such as conducting
drug raids, finding missing criminals, and locating stashed currency.
Frequently, detection dogs
are thought to be used for law enforcement purposes; however, they are also
used as a valuable research tool for wildlife biologists. In California,
detection dogs are trained to discover quagga mussels on boats at public boat
ramps because they are a harmful invasive species for the environment.
Detection dogs also tend to be employed for the purposes of finding and
collecting the feces of a diverse array of species, including caribou,
black-footed ferret, killer whale, and Oregon spotted frog. This process is
known as wildlife scat detection. .
And in July, researchers
in Germany found trained sniffer dogs can detect the coronavirus in human swab samples
with 94 per cent success rate. LSHTM, in collaboration with the charity Medical
Detection Dogs (MDD) and Durham University, have been rigorously testing
whether six dogs can detect coronavirus smells through an intensive training
programme, which was announced in May. The researchers collect odour samples
from people who are infected with COVID-19, and people who are uninfected.
Then, they use those odour samples with six medical detection dogs. If successful, the clever dogs could be
deployed to places like airports within eight to ten weeks after training, the
researchers said, where each dog can 'screen' 250 people per hour.
Canine scent detectors
have been working at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport since 22 September in a pilot
study to see if they can speed up the detection. Four Covid-19 sniffer dogs
have begun work at Helsinki airport in a state-funded pilot scheme that Finnish
researchers hope will provide a cheap, fast and effective alternative method of
testing people for the virus. A dog is capable of detecting the presence of the
coronavirus within 10 seconds and the entire process takes less than a minute
to complete, according to Anna Hielm-Björkman of the University of Helsinki,
who is overseeing the trial.
In UK, the Secretary of
State (Matt Hancock) visited them in order to get an update on that trial.
Health Minister Lord Bethell has previously said the method might provide
speedy results as part of a wider testing strategy. The team, who began testing the dogs in May,
collect odour samples from people who are infected with Covid-19 as well as
ones who aren't, and then train the dogs to tell the difference between them. 'Our previous work has shown that malaria has
a distinctive odour, and with MDD, we successfully trained dogs to accurately
detect malaria,' he said. 'This, combined with the knowledge that respiratory
disease can change body odour, makes us hopeful that the dogs can also detect
Covid-19. 'If successful, this approach could revolutionise how we detect the
virus, with the potential to screen high numbers of people.' The dogs, a
mixture of Labradors and Cocker Spaniels, can already identify deadly diseases
including cancer, malaria and Parkinson's disease.
It is hoped that some of
the dogs - which have demonstrated they can pick out a positive result within
0.5 seconds from someone who isn’t even showing symptoms of the illness - could
be employed in airports, train stations and sporting venues across the country
as early as the new year. Camilla, who has backed the charity’s work since
2014, described the dogs as ‘simply remarkable, so impressive’.
Before
concluding read that there are dogs that can detect diabetes. A diabetic alert dog is an assistance dog
trained to detect high (hyperglycemia) or low (hypoglycemia) levels of blood
sugar in humans with diabetes and alert their owners to dangerous changes in
blood glucose levels. This allows their
owners to take steps to return their blood sugar to normal, such as using
glucose tablets, sugar and carbohydrate rich food. The dog can prompt a human
to take insulin.When owners with diabetes begin to experience hypoglycemia, the
detection dogs perform a predetermined task (e.g. bark, lay down, sit) to
inform the person.
Interesting !
27.10.2020.
