Life is a funny and sad thing. Dogs kept their eyes on the cat threat for years, striving to make themselves cuter, more useful and even more affectionate than their major rivals. They rescued people from buildings, dressed up for Halloween and even learned how to smell cancer. With AIBO safely put down, our canine chums thought they were – er – top dog. But no longer.
A new threat has arisen. The Wasp and the Bumblebee. These little insects are getting in on what has, until now, been an almost exclusive doggie gig: Drug, bomb and body sniffing.
Insentinel has trained bees to snif all of these things. And Glen Rains, at the University of Georgia, has taught wasps to do the same. They’re easier to train than dogs and you only need five of them. The process is simple. Introduce a smell – like cocaine – and give the wasps some sugar. Do that a few times and Bingo. They start acting weird every time they smell blow. (They’re not the only ones.) You hook them up to a machine that sees how they’re acting and you’re off to the races.
The Bees act a bit different. Although the training is similar, they stick their tongues out when they smell the demon white powder. While their reaction is much more polite than that of some strippers, the bees are not very good dancers. (They can tell their hive about nectar on their own time. It’s my cash and I want a bee beard.)
Instead of all of this bumble-mumbo-jumbo, I’d suggest that we chain crackheads to airport metal detectors. They’re cheap, they come pre-trained and if you have crack – they’re finding it. Guaranteed.
1 comment
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mona lisa
April 27, 2006 at 7:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
hahahaha, nice! you’re a fool. thanks for the laugh.
Cricket Cyborg Communications | The Grumpy Owl
July 19, 2009 at 2:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
[...] Aside from detecting chemical attack, this can also be used to rescue people in rubble as the cricket-cyborgs smell human and alter their call. More likely, they’ll use these insects to detect drug shipments. (Just like bees and wasps.) [...]