Working dogs, and other animals...
Top 10 Working Animals   Live Science - September 5, 2010

Bedbug-sniffing dogs

Bedbug sniffing dog. Credit: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Dogs are famous for their super-powerful sniffers. Now, those noses
are being put to work sniffing out growing bedbug infestations around
the country.
Bedbugs are tiny,
blood-sucking insects that hide in furniture, bedding and walls,
and prey on humans for food. Bedbug infestations have resurged in recent
years, and their tiny size makes it hard to know if they're around --
until itchy bites announce their presence. Dogs, however, have such
sensitive noses (with 220 million scent receptors to humans' 5 million)
that sniffing out even a single bedbug is a breeze. Researchers at the
University of Florida have teamed up with bedbug inspectors around the
country to train dogs to alert at the smell of the bugs. With good
training, the dogs are 96-percent accurate. That's one way to keep the
bedbugs from biting.

Rescue dogs

Credit: Dreamstime

Those cartoon Saint Bernards that rescue lost travelers with a few
swallows of brandy from kegs strapped to their necks are based in fact -
sort of. The kegs are a myth, but monks at the Great St. Bernard Pass
in the Western Alps did employ St.
Bernards as watchdogs in the 1600s. The monks soon discovered that
the dogs handled the cold with aplomb and had noses that could lead them
to stranded travelers. They soon began deploying dogs in rescue
missions. Barry, a St. Bernard who lived between 1800 and 1814, is said
to have saved 40 lives on his own, though no real records exist to
confirm this. Nonetheless, Barry is now a national hero: His body is on
display at the Natural History Museum in Berne, Switzerland.

Disease-sniffing dogs

As if dogs' ability to sniff out lost people and tiny bedbugs wasn't
impressive enough, it turns out man's best friend can also smell man's
diseases. Cancer,
for example, gives off tiny amounts of chemicals called alkanes and
benzenes. In 2006, a clinic in California released a study finding that
dogs could be trained to detect
lung cancer with 99-percent accuracy. They could spot breast cancer
with 88-percent accuracy, about the same as a mammogram.
Diabetes is another disease with a signature smell - at least to
canines. Dogs can perceive a drop in blood sugar before the person feels
the symptoms. By alerting their owners early, diabetes' dogs can help keep
blood sugar on an even keel, avoiding sudden spikes and drops and
decreasing the risk for diabetic tissue damage. Pretty impressive work
for the family pooch.

Bomb-sniffing bees

Dogs aren't the only critters with a powerful sense of smell. As
foragers, bees
follow their antennae, the site of their smell receptors, to food.
They also use smelly chemicals known as pheromones to communicate.
These skills come in handy for detecting explosives, according to
British company Inscentinel, Ltd. The company trains
bees to respond to the scent of materials like TNT by exposing them
to the material and rewarding them with sugar water. Within a few
hours, the bees learn to stick out their proboscises in response to the
target smell. They're then loaded into a device that looks like a
hand-held vacuum cleaner. The device sucks in air while cameras monitor
the bees for any proboscis-extension. Afterward, the bees are released
back into their hives, no doubt with a great story to chemically signal
to all their buddies down at the honeycomb.

Mine-sweeping dolphins

Imagine a Navy recruit who can hold his or her breath for hours, dive
to astonishing depths and navigate murky waters with ease. If you're
picturing something with fins, you're on the right track. The Navy
has long used dolphins (as well as sea lions) to recover equipment
in deep water, patrol harbors in search of underwater intruders and
locate suspicious objects. Perhaps dolphins' greatest attribute is their
ability to echolocate, or bounce sound waves off an object to "see" it.
This comes in handy for locating mines in dark, sediment-rich waters.
Several fleets of dolphins are trained to find mines and mark them for
removal by human crews.

Mine-sweeping dolphins

Imagine a Navy recruit who can hold his or her breath for hours, dive
to astonishing depths and navigate murky waters with ease. If you're
picturing something with fins, you're on the right track. The Navy
has long used dolphins (as well as sea lions) to recover equipment
in deep water, patrol harbors in search of underwater intruders and
locate suspicious objects. Perhaps dolphins' greatest attribute is their
ability to echolocate, or bounce sound waves off an object to "see" it.
This comes in handy for locating mines in dark, sediment-rich waters.
Several fleets of dolphins are trained to find mines and mark them for
removal by human crews.

Fishing cormorants

Credit: National Park Service

Cormorants are natural fishermen, diving and scooping up fish with
their long beaks. For fishermen in Japan and China, the large, black
water birds act like living
fishing nets.
The traditional cormorant fishing trip starts with torches to
illuminate the water and draw in fish. The fisherman ties a snare around
the base of the cormorant's neck, so the bird won't be able to swallow
large fish. Smaller fish still go down the hatch, but when the bird
snags a big catch, the fisherman pulls the bird back onto the raft,
where it regurgitates the fish.
Nowadays, few people depend on cormorant fishing to survive. Instead,
fishermen put on shows for tourists in towns like Yangshuo, China. One
way or another, these working birds continue to put food on the table.

Truffle-hunting pigs

Credit: University of Adelaide

Truffles are lumpy, unappetizing-looking fungi that grow underground
amidst the roots of trees. They're also a culinary delicacy: Truffles
routinely sell for thousands of dollars a pound. In a record-breaking
sale, one Macau businessman paid $330,000 for a 3.3-pound (1.5
kilograms) specimen.
How to find these edible treasures without digging up every tree in
the forest? Truffle hogs. According to "Wild about Mushrooms: The
Cookbook of the Mycological Society of San Francisco" (Aris Books,
1987), truffles give off a scent similar to that of a male hog, which
means female
pigs go wild over them. Truffle hogs are still used to guide people
to fungal caches, but the animal's tendency to scarf down their find
has triggered a shift to more easily trained truffle dogs in recent
years.

Sea lion scientists

Credit: U.S. Navy

Humans aren't well-suited for exploring the open ocean. We can't dive
deep, breathe underwater or even hold our breath for more than a measly
few minutes. Manned or robotic subs are expensive and complex.

So to map out the deep blue sea, researchers have turned to the
animals that live there. Sea lions, sea turtles, sharks and tuna are
among the creatures tracked by the Tagging
of Pacific Predators program, a multi-institution project that has
tagged more than 2,000 animals. The small tags send data on ocean
temperature, salinity, depth and more back to scientists via satellite.
Some of the information tells researchers about the animals; other data
is useful for mapping out different ocean ecosystems. In other words,
the tagged Pacific predators are like unwitting research assistants,
their daily routines adding to our scientific knowledge about the world.

Therapy horses

Thanks to research showing animals' calming effect on humans, many
rehabilitation programs employ non-human therapists. Dogs, cats, birds
and snakes have all been used to comfort patients with everything from
physical injuries to mental illness.
Horses can't usually visit hospital wards, but research suggests that
equine therapy can be helpful as well. Therapists have long used horse-riding to help people with spinal cord injuries or motor diseases like
cerebral palsy to learn balance. Now, hippotherapy, as it is known, is
expanding into the realm of autistic disorders. Kids with autism or
emotional disorders may find the gait of a horse soothing, and learning
to brush and feed the animals can be rewarding. A 2009 study in the
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders followed 19 children who
participated in a 12-week horse therapy program. The results showed that
kids who had horse therapy sought out more sensory input, and became
more social and less distractible than kids who didn't participate.
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