A recent study found dogs can sniff out the novel coronavirus in the saliva of patients with coronavirus.
Researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Germany, found trained detection dogs could determine the difference between saliva samples from COVID-19 infected patients and those who do not.
“During the presentation of 1012 randomized samples, the dogs achieved an overall average detection rate of 94 percent,” the authors wrote in the study.
The researchers explained there are certain compounds produced by SARS-CoV-2, which can produce “specific scent imprints” that can be identified by dogs trained to detect the odor.
“Dogs devote lots of brainpower to interpreting smells. They have more than 100 million sensory receptor sites in the nasal cavity as compared to 6 million people,” according to VCA Animal Hospitals. “The area of the canine brain devoted to analyzing odors is about 40 times larger than the comparable part of the human brain. In fact, it’s been estimated that dogs can smell anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 times better than people.”
Dogs have additional olfactory tool that increases their ability to smell.
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