Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
In any case, bugs are passé. In the past five years, the entities that have truly turned on
tech reporters aren't the hybridized machines with animal names, like the Wasp Hound,
but plants. Bomb-detecting ferns, for example, created a minor media stampede. “They turn
completely white when they sense something nefarious around them,” a FOX News reporter
said. Since we are used to seeing big leafy plants in malls and in fern bars, I worry that we'll
hardly notice them turning from a robust green to a sickly white if someone plants a bomb.
“We actually modify the seed,” University of Colorado biologist June Medford told FOX
News, “and then it's a trait that is stable and stays with it forever. It's very empowering be-
cause it will tell you that there's an explosive around: 'Get the security guys here!'”
Sounds great. So how long does it take that fern to turn white and tell the security guys?
While Medford says that her studies show the plants have “detection abilities similar to or
better than those of dogs,” it takes the ferns hours to change color. “Work is under way to
reduce that to a few minutes,” the report promised.
We don't yet have bioengineered green dogs who turn white when they smell a bomb. The
old-fashioned ones are pretty fast at telling us something is amiss. Faster than hours. Or a few
minutes. More like a second. When there's a bomb, speed can matter.
That's the problem with the vast majority of the dog replacements, from fern to machine
to all the things in between: They don't have the skills that dogs have in one furry package.
Researchers realized that in the 1970s when they tried a variety of species to replace dogs;
they keep learning that lesson over and over. Dogs are adaptable, mobile, sensitive. They use
complex cognitive judgments to avoid lots of false positives. They can do several things at
once: sniff, raise an alarm, bite if necessary, act as a deterrent. They interact with people more
than a fern does. They're more fun to have around than angry bees. I know this, having been
stung a few times tending to our beehive.
Best of all, dogs are comparatively inexpensive. The argument that it takes money and
time to train a dog is countered by the argument that training technicians on machines can
be just as expensive. Machines don't run themselves any more than dogs do. Machines break
down, they need calibrating constantly, and they can be more temperamental about weather
than dogs.
“When I started doing work in this area twenty years ago, I originally thought we would
be able to make a machine that could replicate a dog,” said analytical chemist Ken Furton.
“But it's not going to happen in my lifetime. We are not going to replicate what a dog can
do.”
The Pentagon came to the same conclusion in late 2010 in Afghanistan and Iraq. It shut
down a huge program that had spent $17 billion in employees and technologies and failed to
make a dent in the problem of IEDs. After five years, hundreds of projects, and a “blizzard of
cash” paid to the country's biggest defense contractors, reported the Center for Public Integ-
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