Super Sniffers

Long Description

Most of us didn’t see the pandemic coming, but could our puppy pals smell it?! Did you know that illnesses can have a “smell”? Canine noses are up to 100 thousand times more sensitive than ours. We’ve already trained dogs to sniff out certain types of cancer and even malaria! Could our canin counterparts sniff out coronavirus, too?

written and reported by Sumner L. Norman, PhD

References

1. UPenn launches COVID 19 canine scent detection study

2. Sniffer Dogs in the Melanoma Clinic? The Lancet (1989)

3. Dogs detect bladder cancer in urine samples

4. Dogs detect lung cancer in breath samples

5. Dogs detect ovarian cancer in blood samples

6. New study reports dogs successfully diagnosed malaria by sniffing socks worn by African children, EurekAlert (2018)