You’ve probably heard about dogs who use their noses to do jobs like sniffing out explosives, finding missing people, or even sensing medical needs, like detecting cancer or predicting an oncoming seizure. Those aren’t the only things dogs’ noses are good for, though.
In fact, their super sniffers are often better at detecting things than our best machines. There are tons of ways they can put their noses to good use. People have come up with some pretty odd jobs for pups to do with their superhero-like sense of smell.
Here are a few of the weirdest jobs dogs are trained to do with their noses.
1. Saving Artwork
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston employed a furry staff member to help care for their precious works.
Riley the Weimaraner is trained to detect moths and other bugs that feast on cloth, wood, paper, and more. Museums need constant pest control to protect valuable and irreplaceable objects.
Riley can detect art-eating bugs and alert his human partner by sitting in front of pieces that have pests present. A human can then examine the work for signs of damage.
Pest detection isn’t just good for saving art. Dogs have also been used to track down larva on golf courses so they can be eliminated before they become a problem. Hopefully Riley will help bust bugs and save valuable pieces of human culture.
2. Finding Whale Poop
Tucker is one of many dogs trained by Conservation Canine, a program that puts dogs’ noses to good use to help endangered animals.
It may sound gross to go sniffing out whale poop, but Tucker helps scientists track down the excrement that holds valuable clues about the creatures’ genetic identities, diets, where their prey came from, hormone levels, pregnancy stages, and scientists can even tell if there are any pollutants in the whales’ systems.
Whales aren’t the only endangered species whose poop gets tracked down by trained pups. The program that trained Tucker also trains dogs to find scat from spotted owls, caribou, wolves, and tigers among other animals.
These dogs are giving endangered species a fighting chance by helping conservationists get information that can help them preserve the environment and ecosystem.
3. Sniffing Out Bed Bugs
Bed bugs are a growing problem in many of the major cities in the United States, and one way to combat the infestation is to rely on bed bug detection dogs.
Roscoe is one such pup who can sniff out these little creatures that leave fecal droppings no bigger than a dot of ink. Bed bug dogs can detect with up to 98 percent accuracy, though sometimes that causes a problem.
The scent of bed bugs can linger on clothes, waft through vents, or be brought inside by other animals or people. This means that sometimes the dogs indicate that there is an infestation when there isn’t one. This may be one of the few instances where being too good at your job is a bad thing.
However, many people have benefited from dogs like Roscoe who find bed bugs before they can become a problem.
4. Finding The Mushrooms
Have you ever had delicious truffles with your meal? If you’ve had a fancy French or Italian dish, you may have sampled one of these yummy and expensive mushrooms.
The reason they cost so much is that they’re difficult to find, especially ones that are ripe and ready to eat. Rare truffles can sell for $2,000 per pound or more.
One of the best ways to find them is with a trained truffle-hunting dog. Although there are several breeds with great sniffers who are often relied on for truffle hunting, really any dog with a decent nose can be trained for scent work. For that reason, many ordinary people go on truffle hunts with their dogs as a hobby.
So next time you try one of these delicacies, remember that a pup may have tracked it down for you.
5. Detecting Computer Hardware
In the modern age, there are tons of crimes that people can commit with computers, hard drives, and other forms of technology. This is a challenge for police, as sometimes thumb drives and storage devices can be very tiny and hard to find.
While small drives may be difficult for us humans to spot, they’re no problem for dogs trained to detect the scent of hardware. Bear, a black Labrador, is one dog trained to do just that, and he was integral in busting former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle years ago.
He managed to find a data storage device in Jared’s home that was used as evidence in his conviction. Bear went to work for the Seattle Police Department to continue investigating internet crimes.
6. Looking For Sewage Problems
You probably don’t spend much of your day thinking about sewers, but they’re pretty important to our lives. There are tons of things that can flow into sewers that pollute not only the environment, but our own water supply that we use to wash our stuff, bathe, and drink.
Luckily, we have dogs to keep us safe. Dogs can be trained to detect pollutants in water and track down their sources. They can sniff out raw sewage, dangerous chemicals and detergents, illegal pipe connections, or pipes that have broken down among other things.
Water samples can be taken to test pollutants in a lab. The problem is that the results can take days or weeks to come through. Dogs, on the other hand, indicate immediately whether something is wrong and find the source right away.
These pups are keeping our water safe and protecting the environment.
7. Helping Archaeologists
Archaeologists spend a good amount of time digging, so it’s not much of a stretch to think that dogs would be able to help them out.
However, dogs aren’t really being trained to dig up old pots and bones. Rather, they detect these items so humans can find valuable artifacts.
Migaloo is one of these dogs, and she’s trained to find old bones. Dogs are sometimes used by police and disaster responders to find cadavers. But finding bones that are hundreds of years old is a little different.
Dogs need to be trained to find the odors of bones, specifically, and not the odor of rot or decay, which can be found all over the place in, say, a forest.
Dogs aren’t just trained to find valuable artifacts in the field, though. Some are trained to bust artifact smugglers who steal pottery, bones, and other items. Usually these pieces of history are stolen from war-torn countries, smuggled, and sold for high prices.
The dogs who detect these items also help law enforcement bring down thieves and preserve culture. So dogs aren’t just finding valuable objects for archaeologists, they’re using their noses to save those findings, too.
What other strange jobs have you heard of that dogs can do with their noses? What jobs do you think dogs can do that they’ve never tried before? Let us know in the comments below!
