Feature:
Meet The Dogs Sniffing Out Unwell Trees
“Mira’s nose is so sensitive that she can smell sick citrus trees, & U.S. orange growers are hoping her super sniffer will help combat one of the biggest threats ever to their crop.
The government has trained 10 dogs including Mira- a 32 month old German shepherd-Belgian Malinois mix- to identify a bacteria that has been killing citrus trees for a decade in Florida...Similar to canine teams that sniff out bombs, drugs, & even bed bugs, this one is on the hunt for a disease known as citrus greening...
...Dogs, with 50 times more scent receptors in their noses than humans, sense chemicals that trees emit when infected. They’re accurate 99.7% of the time...
‘They’re pretty much the forefront of early detection for us right now,’ said Yindra Dixon, a public affairs specialist for the Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service...
‘Tests show the wet noses of the dogs are more accurate than DNA sampling techniques...The animals also have detected the disease in trees that didn’t show symptoms until days or weeks later...
Once trained, Mira & the other dogs have shown they are both eager & accurate, said Jerry Bishop, the training director at Coast to Coast K9 Teams, the company working with the USDA to co-ordinate grove inspections by the animals.
‘As soon as she comes out of the kennel, she likes to chest bump you,’ Bishop said of Mira. ‘She’s like, ‘Let’s go to work. I’m ready’...”
Melissa Mittelman
Bloomberg News
in The Montreal Gazette
March 5/2016
Cute Critter Pic
Weekly Chuckle
No comments:
Post a Comment