Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
female handler. The final army report on mine detection, sadly, didn't give full credence to
the gender of the best pig handler; instead, the report noted the pigs' great willingness “to
work with man.” No, that particular pig was clearly willing to work with woman.
There were just a few problems with the test Durocs: They were pigs, with “unfortunate
social habits” and a certain stigma: “Would you let a German shepherd in to search your
house or a red Duroc?” Jim asked me. Another problem was that red Durocs were highly
regarded for their “excellent rate of gain,” a plus for slaughter but a minus for mine detec-
tion—especially when the four-hundred-pound pigs got excited about finding mines. They
would pull on their leashes. “They'd really drag you around,” Jim said. More problematic
than their enormous girth, and potentially more dangerous, was the pigs' “irrepressible desire
to root in the soil,” which needed to be discouraged during a mine search. So even though
domestic pigs were especially effective at sniffing out all sorts of materials, SwRI ultimately
rejected them as sniffer animals.
The test pigs weren't wasted. Joan Johnston, whose husband, William Johnston, was a re-
searcher with the U.S. Army center that co-sponsored the study, remembered the great picnic
SwRI hosted the year of the pig study: It featured a delicious pork barbecue.
The experimentation didn't stop with pigs. Coyotes, coyote-beagle crosses, deer, javelinas,
raccoons, foxes, a badger, coatis, timber wolves, a civet cat.
hree
kinds of skunks: spotted,
striped, and skunk-nosed. And the occasional indigo snake and rattlesnake, thought uniquely
suited for mine detection because of an unsurpassed ability to crawl into holes. Researchers
even tried raptors for mine detection.
The behavioral scientists, project managers, and trainers at SwRI were beginning to realize,
with some disappointment, that wild animals had issues: They were wild. Wolves and foxes
considered people “a menace to be avoided.” The raccoons weren't awful when they were
young, but as soon as they became adolescents, they started rebelling: They bit. The teen
javelinas wouldn't listen to or perform for their human handlers. The coatis (a cousin of rac-
coons), despite their great snouts, were “lethargic.” The deer couldn't search systematically.
The rattlesnakes weren't prone to biting; they simply fell asleep in the sun.
The dog, ordinary
canis planus
, became the fallback. The dog might not have the most
wonderful nose of all the animals in the kingdom, nor is it necessarily the most intelligent. It
can't slither into tiny holes like a snake or leap over obstacles as nimbly as a deer, but it can
go a lot of places. It's the right size for a number of tasks. It can walk at your side. The dog
lives long enough to make the training worthwhile. It isn't nocturnal or diurnal but is happy
to be awake when you are. Above all, the dog wants to please.
The dog, SwRI and the army concluded, was just right.
“We found the dogs so useful,” Nick Montanarelli said. “That's how I got into detection
work.”
