If the boffins have their way, the sniffer dogs of the future could be wasps. Yep, instead of looking for bombs or fugitive terrorists with doe-eyed bloodhound critters, the Man could use parasitic wasps which have super sensitive odour receptors. Makes a bit of a mockery of all them old black and white Louisiana chain gang swamp escape movies , don’t it? Scary too. Bzzzzzz……..
He found he could train the wasps to seek out almost any odor of concern — from explosives to marijuana to clandestinely buried corpses – by exposing them to the smell while giving them sugar water. It only takes a few minutes to program the wasps, he says. “We let them feed for 10 seconds, remove them for 30 seconds to a minute, repeat that two times and basically they’ve imprinted that odor in their brains.”