Creating Conservation

They say “the nose knows” but I don’t think they (whoever they are) really knew how “right on the nose” they were.  Ok, I’ll stop with the nose jokes now.  What I mean to say, is that while our human noses, with a measly 5 million olfactory receptors are sufficient for us to determine when to eat, when to avoid, when to stay and when to run; the dog’s nose, with a whopping 220 million receptors is really a work of art and humans as domesticators and breeders, have designed lovable noses on 4 legs.  Evolution gave the ancestors of dogs, the grey wolf, a powerful sniffer, and the wolf’s nose combined with her teeth and hearing and pack mentality created valuable companions to early humans.  We were given the benefits of guard dogs and hunting partners in exchange for food scraps, warm fires and belly rubs.  As wolves and humans continued to develop strong relationships, amazing things happened.  Natural selection molded the friendlier and more protective wolves into our best companions and eventually wolves and people began to innately understand the other’s emotional state and intentions.  Just hang out with a dog owner and her best friend for a while and you’ll see what I mean.  Somewhere along the line, some wolves formed lineages that began a new subspecies, and the dog was born.  From there, the rest is history (as opposed to prehistory) and humans began to design dogs to suit specific needs or to present specific features and behaviors.  Consider the bloodhound, the poodle, the German shepherd, the greyhound, the Australian cattle dog and the Pekingese for examples of the amazing diversity in the dog world.

Many dog breeders saw the benefits of utilizing the extraordinary canine nose for working purposes and certain breeds evolved to possess many more scent receptors than the grey wolf had as well lips, ears, coats, and high-drive temperaments that aided the dog, and consequently the human, in searching and sniffing endeavors.  The bloodhound for instance is thought to have been bred around 1000 AD and was commonly used for man-hunting by the Middle Ages, as they still are today.  German shepherds, commonly used today as police sniffing and protection dogs were bred around the 1850’s to be herding dogs expressing intelligence, protectiveness and a keen sense of smell as breed traits.  The Labrador, which are used heavily today as gun-dogs, therapy dogs and tracking and detection dogs,  were bred around 1830 to have an excellent sense of smell, a kind demeanor and strong work ethic.  And the Australian cattle dog, my personal sniffer dog’s breed, was bred for its courage, agility, intelligence, sense of smell, and love of working.  There are many other dog breeds, as well as mixed breeds that are utilized today to work with humans wherever their noses and temperaments are needed.

Today, dogs are being used for a wide range of service purposes and the categories grow all the time.  It may surprise you to learn that dogs, using that wonderful nose of theirs, have been trained to detect cancer, diabetes, a forthcoming seizure, a panic attack, blood, bed bugs, buried explosives, hidden drugs, and electronics such as cell phones hidden by prisoners.  Additionally dogs have been trained to search for wildlife and wildlife products, which is what interests me most.  As unbelievable at it may sound, a group in Washington state, the Conservation Canines, has trained two dogs to smell whale poop (referred to as scat by researchers) from a mile away while riding on a boat.  Wildlife detection dogs, sometimes referred to as conservation detection dogs or wildlife trafficking dogs, have been taught to detect scat, carcasses, burrows, eggs or living wildlife, various plant species, and parts of wildlife (referred to as wildlife products) such as ivory, bear bile, rhino horn, fish bladders, sea turtle shells, furs and skins.

As you might imagine, these dogs have so much to contribute to conservation.  Scientists and field researchers are now employing groups like Conservation Canines or Find It Detection Dogs, or training their own dogs to detect wildlife that is otherwise hard to find because of size, habitat, temperament or small populations.  For example, one researcher used a sniffer dog to locate the elusive and rare Argentinian bush dog to establish whether the poorly understood population was in need of government protection.  In another study, scientists wanted to know how wind mill farms were affecting bird and bat populations.  Detector dogs were brought in to find carcasses of tiny animals hidden within the shrubbery that were virtually impossible for the human eye to find.  As for the whale poop sniffer dogs, they have contributed greatly to the understanding of the health and habitat use of the pacific right whale, formerly a needle in the haystack kind of search (or a whale in the ocean kind of search).  These working dogs also contribute to saving the Earth’s endangered species by detecting smuggled wildlife products like ivory, and living animals such as the

pangolin, which is highly endangered due to the illegal pet trade.  Currently, the US Fish and Wildlife Service have dogs that work in airports and shipping ports and at border crossings for that very purpose.  Since the US is the largest consumer of wildlife products in the world, these dogs have become massively important in the fight against the illegal wildlife trade.  Sadly, due to budgetary restrictions, USFWS employs only a tiny amount of wildlife detector dogs compared to the 12,000 canine detectors that work for Homeland Security in search of drugs, explosives and so forth.



For now, the use of wildlife detection dogs is in its infancy.  Roughly seven professional organizations have sniffer dog teams for hire in the US and there are a few others scattered throughout the world in places like Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Africa.  Additionally, a handful of governments employ dogs for wildlife product detection, such as Kenya and the U.S.  I have “sniffed out” roughly 40 scientific articles related to utilizing detection dogs in the pursuit of ecological studies, and these studies include mammals, fish, invertebrates, birds, reptiles, amphibians and plants.  The majority of scholarly articles that I have seen have all reported favorable results when utilizing dogs in field research, most often because of their abilities to cover a great deal more distance than people, to work in difficult terrain, to aid researchers in collecting data in a non-invasive way (without causing stress to the target animal) and to find target scents that are difficult to visually detect.

Given the blessings of scientists and wildlife agencies around the world, I can only imagine that the field will continue to grow as the word gets out and the funding becomes available.  Many organizations adopt death row shelter dogs because their high energy temperaments make them difficult pets, but excellent working dogs.  Dogs take roughly 12 weeks to train initially and then only about a week or so to train on a new scent.  My point is, there is no shortage of available dogs, and they just need jobs! So now you know what they know, what scientists know, what governments know and what I know.  The dog nose knows and it’s capable of changing the conservation game.

For more information on wildlife detection dogs check out:
conservationbiology.uw.edu
finditdetectiondogs.com
wd4c.org
http://www.odumagazine.com/wildlife-detection-dogs-nosing-out-the-bad-guys-video/
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/jul/02/finding-poop-has-its-rewards/
and
cslzambia.org

Photo credits in order:
"Iris" by Allison Ballentine
Conservation Canines - no credit
Conservation Canines - Amanda Phillips
Conservation South Luwanga - no credit
USFWS - no credit
Working Dogs 4 Conservation - no credit