In this short film, Discover Animals’ Geoff Moore meets Bluey and Bandit, Wessex Water’s newest pollution detection dogs. The cocker spaniels are part of a UK-first team, being trained to sniff out misconnections in sewers to help protect the environment. You can find out more here.
Bluey and Bandit’s powerful sense of smell is more effective than traditional detection tools. As well as the environmental benefits, they are expected to save considerable time and money with their ability to find small concentrations of odour in challenging environments both above and below ground.
Dogs have up to 300 million scent receptors compared to humans who only have six million. A large portion of their brain is dedicated to analysing scent, which enables them to gather larger quantities of information to interpret.
So far, detection dogs have been helping protect wildlife by sniffing out great crested newts and will soon help prevent wastewater from entering the environment.
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