In SARDA Wales we have four scent discriminating trailing dogs, which search for and follow the scent trail of a specific person, using an article or swab and their capabilities never cease to amaze.
So I was fascinated to come across this article, which details a recently published research paper (see here): http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0020704 describing an experiment using Czech Republic Police dogs which have been trained to scent discriminate and identify people from swabs taken from scenes of crime. The article finds that the dogs were able to identify swabs taken from identical twins, even when the twins lived in the same house and ate the same food and the dog was presented with swabs from both twins at the same time. One dog in particular identified the correct twin every single time.
That, is pretty impressive.
Hat tip to Marginal Revolution for the article: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/06/police-dogs-can-distinguish-identical-twins.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marginalrevolution%2Ffeed+%28Marginal+Revolution%29
Sue Layland
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