Union

At the intersect between education and technology

Research Finds That Dogs Can Be Trained To Alert Humans To Cancers

For years now, scientific research and studies have been the core of enhancement and improvement of not only the human experience of life on earth but also how life functions and thrives. We have seen a tremendous amount of ongoing interest and investment that is powered forward scientific fields from strength to strength over the years. Today, the interest and investment is higher than ever before as the enhancement and understanding of the true value and potential of scientific discovery and exploration continues to gain valuable momentum even – and especially – today.

There are many examples of research findings that have opened our eyes and transformed the way that we approach different aspects of life as we know it. Each of these different research findings is important and valuable in and of itself and each of them has its own unique role to play in her science is continuously enhance and improve as a whole as well as how that particular research finding as value or introduces a new idea to the world to be built upon and further understood on an ongoing basis heading into the future and beyond.

An emerging field of science

One of the most interesting (and frankly astounding) fields of scientific discovery and exploration is that of dogs and their capability to literally smell cancer. We have long known that dogs are humanity’s greatest companions. This much has not changed. However, what has become more obvious in recent years – and especially in the last few years – is that there is a significant capability in dogs to be able to sniff out illnesses in humans, including cancers. There have been many opportunities and scientific research studies surrounding this particular capability of dogs and in recent years they have gone to new heights.

Recent research further proves the value

There is quite a lot to be said about the fact that whether it is the latest allergy chews for dogs on the market or the introduction of the latest fields of veterinary care of these friendly animals, dogs are quite actively and consistently at the top of our approach towards wildlife and our understanding of creatures big and small. And a recent research finding has further proven the value of a dog’s sense of smell. Research scientist Alexandra Horowitz wrote that the vast majority of how dogs experience the world is through their nose. Depending on the breed of the dog, their nose has around 125 to 300 million scent glands while our noses have around 5 million. This means that an individual dog’s sense of smell is anywhere between 1,000 to 100,000 times more sensitive than ours.

Diving into this research more

This is an incredible realisation. And the research indicates the dogs are capable of detecting even the most miniscule traces of disease utilising their scent glands. This is done through the detection of tiny traces of odors, which are roughly the equivalent of a single teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic size swimming pools). Various scientific explorations have found that dogs have been able to detect cancer such as breast cancer, bladder cancer ovarian tumors, cervical cancers, melanoma, and colorectal cancer. And while this is quite exciting and encouraging given the fact that we simply cannot detect cancers and other diseases through sense of smell, there are still quite a lot of work to be done before this type of scientific discovery and finding is able to be built upon more and even realistically and widely utilised as a genuine form of disease detection in humans. This is truly just the start.