Biology Reference
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rity, one system rose above the others: dogs and their handlers, along with observant people:
“The most effective IED detectors today . . . don't hum, whir, shoot, scan, or fly. They talk.
And they bark,” Peter Cary and Nancy Youssef wrote.
The rate of finding IEDs with other technologies stood “stubbornly” at just 50 percent,
Lieutenant General Michael Oates told
National Defense
magazine. Handlers and dogs found
IEDs at the rate of 80 percent. The best bomb detectors, Oates said, are dogs working with
handlers, local informants, and the trained soldier's eye.
“That combo presents the best detection system we currently have,” Oates said.
A couple of years ago, I happened to be standing next to one of the best detection systems
we currently have. I was at a K9 training near a military base in North Carolina. A special
forces handler and his military working dog were taking a break from classified work in the
Middle East. The Belgian Malinois was lying quietly beside his handler with his back legs
tucked under his haunches and his front claws dug slightly into the ground. His eyes weren't
fixed on his handler; instead, he was looking out. he dog's eyes never stopped scanning the
big field of mowed grass in front of them. he handler looked down at his dog. It was, he
said, like having a formidable extension, two and sometimes three hundred feet in front of
you, keeping track, watching out for you, making sure you weren't attacked. Or blown up.
he handler said he couldn't count the number of times his dog had saved his life.
• • •
Not only can turkey vultures detect a dead mouse from more than 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) away,
but they have a major advantage over sniffer dogs—they can fly, removing the challenge of difficult
terrain.
—
Der Spiegel
, 2011
Bomb detection isn't the only arena where machines and their mash-ups don't appear to be
making much progress. The body-location business isn't seeing a great deal of electronic nose
success, either. One group of German forensic scientists said in their 2010 conclusion about
using machines to locate human bodies (though they used dead rabbits in their experiment):
“In principle, an electronic nose based on the sensors applied in this study can be used to find
decomposing human bodies in terrain. However, for design and development of a practically
applicable device, sampling and measurement procedures have to be optimized.”
In principle, with optimized hooves, pigs can fly.
Between the Germans with their rabbits and the Georgians with their wasps, I was starting
to feel better about the dog's place in the body-location universe. Good dogs seem to move
through a kind of complex decision tree on difficult searches: “This, not that,” “Up, not
