Could the Boston bombings have been prevented? Researchers at Alabama’s Auburn University said they’re training the ultimate bomb sniffing dogs.
The researchers said these canines can figure out there’s a bomb before cops even realize a package is suspicious.
They’re called Vapor Wake Dogs.
“Your standard bomb dog, your explosive detector dog, is primed on looking at an object, a backpack placed somewhere. A Vapor Wake Dog’s ability is to detect the odor coming off of that backpack on the back of the person as they carry it, and to follow that plume of vapor,” Dr. James Floyd said.
Floyd, and Auburn University professor, said the dogs can follow a plume, or bomb vapor, stretching several football fields.
It’s a skill so unique, the university hopes to patent it.
Once a dog catches the odor in the air, it never lets up. The dog follows the suspect until they stop, and the dog stops too then sits down, alerting his handler to the suspect.
These dogs can potentially stop a would-be bomber before it’s too late.
“Had one of our dogs been in place on that corner with those two guys walking there with those backpacks, I think they would’ve alerted on them,” Floyd said.
Their training starts early, as early as three weeks old.
While they’re puppies, they are held a lot and socialized, so by the time their formal training starts, they are used to people and loud noises.
Auburn has its own breeding program for the bomb sniffing dogs.
They rarely use shepherds and traditional breeds but lean more on labradors and spaniels.
Paul Hammond, whose company I-K9 is working with Auburn to train and deploy Vapor Wake Dogs.
“We need a dog that fits into the public profile, that the public is just going to walk past and ignore as if it was a domestic pet,” he said.
Auburn’s bomb dogs are being used in airports, on Amtrak trains and by police departments too.
“Well the dogs olfactory system is 220 million sense cells compared to a human’s five million sense cells, so that sort of gives you a real comparison. Where we might be able to smell a woman’s perfume walking by, but the dog can smell not only the perfume, but the clothes, the material she’s wearing, the shower gel she washed with that morning,” Hammond said.
In addition to training, these dogs are also able to detect explosives in the traditional way.
~ Courtesy of CNN
Tags: bomb dog, bomb sniffing dog, bomb vapor dog, Vapor Wake Dog
