Bomb Detectors Get Buzzy
By Hayley Birch
The Los Alamos National Laboratory has been, quite literally, a hive of activity for the past few months, as researchers readied to publish the results of their Stealthy Insect Sensor Project.
Scientists, led by Tim Haarmann, have been keeping themselves busy training bees to sniff out bombs. Bees have a naturally acute sense of smell, which they use to seek out nectar, and are apparently easier to train than dogs. The researchers used sugar water rewards to train honeybees to respond to dynamite and C4 explosives.
Haarman is so confident about his bees’ abilities that he thinks they could some day take the place of traditional sniffer dogs at airports and in bomb disposal teams. “We are very excited at the success of our research as it could have far-reaching implications for both defence and homeland security.”
But these bees aren’t the first hymenoptera that have been taught to sniff out danger. Last year a team at the University of Georgia developed the ‘Wasp Hound’, essentially a plastic tube full of parasitic wasps, each one with a knack for tracking scents equivalent to that of a blood hound. They used a camera linked to a computer to monitor the crowding behaviour of the wasps in response to chemicals.
Like wasps, bomb-detecting bees can be stored in a convenient handheld container – a ‘bee box’ (still in development). But Haarman is convinced that his bees offer an improvement on the Wasp Hound, which has been slow to take off. And the Stealthy Insect Sensor method has a clear cut indicator for scents of a dubious nature; bees stick their tongues out when they smell bombs. "When bees detect the presence of explosives, they simply stick their proboscis out."
To find out more about Hayley or read more of her articles click here.
Scientists, led by Tim Haarmann, have been keeping themselves busy training bees to sniff out bombs. Bees have a naturally acute sense of smell, which they use to seek out nectar, and are apparently easier to train than dogs. The researchers used sugar water rewards to train honeybees to respond to dynamite and C4 explosives.
Haarman is so confident about his bees’ abilities that he thinks they could some day take the place of traditional sniffer dogs at airports and in bomb disposal teams. “We are very excited at the success of our research as it could have far-reaching implications for both defence and homeland security.”
But these bees aren’t the first hymenoptera that have been taught to sniff out danger. Last year a team at the University of Georgia developed the ‘Wasp Hound’, essentially a plastic tube full of parasitic wasps, each one with a knack for tracking scents equivalent to that of a blood hound. They used a camera linked to a computer to monitor the crowding behaviour of the wasps in response to chemicals.
Like wasps, bomb-detecting bees can be stored in a convenient handheld container – a ‘bee box’ (still in development). But Haarman is convinced that his bees offer an improvement on the Wasp Hound, which has been slow to take off. And the Stealthy Insect Sensor method has a clear cut indicator for scents of a dubious nature; bees stick their tongues out when they smell bombs. "When bees detect the presence of explosives, they simply stick their proboscis out."
To find out more about Hayley or read more of her articles click here.
Image: Mario A. Magallanes Trejo
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