The nose knows

Zyla, a border collie, has been trained to sniff out the habitat of the endangered ribbon snake. (Bruce Bottomley Photo)

Turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks and help some endangered species in the process.

A novel training protocol refined at Dalhousie’s Canid Research Lab is producing tracking dogs capable of distinguishing among scents with great accuracy in the wild.

Three former shelter dogs have been trained to recognize and track the scent of endangered species, with a remarkable 90 to 100 per cent success rate in the lab. All the dogs live in homes as pets, in addition to volunteering for their part-time ‘jobs.’

Senior instructor Simon Gadbois is an expert in the behavioural endocrinology of canid—a group that includes the domesticated dog, wolves and foxes—and he’s excited about the many potential applications of the research.

This project is attracting the attention of animal behaviour specialists as well as wildlife management experts.

Nine-year old Border Collie Zyla is so adept at finding a particular species of endangered  snake that she’s been contracted by Parks Canada to canvas Kejimkujik National Park. During the summer, a team spent field time canvassing the population and habitat of the ribbon snake, a close relative of the garter snake that lives only in southwest Nova Scotia.

Zyla’s job is to explore marshy areas with tall grasses to pick up the trail of the rare snake. After an excited bark when the snake is spotted, her part of the job ends and backup team of technicians and scientists takes over.

As a reward for her work, Zyla gets a play break. (Bruce Bottomley Photo)

”At some point at the end of the trail, someone yells ‘snake!’ and everyone scrambles to catch it safely,” says researcher Dr. Gadbois.

While Zyla gets a play break with a graduate student as a reward, a herpetologist notes markings and measurements. Additionally, the group expects to note preferred habitats and travel patterns as an outcome of the fieldwork.

For instance, Delphine Mousse’s research will focus on finding the snake’s winter shelter as part of an internship with the lab. She’s a graduate student at the University of Jean Monnet at Saint Etienne in France, where she specializes in ecology and animal behaviour.

A number of other Nova Scotian species have isolated populations, particularly in Southwest Nova. The theory is that a former land bridge to Maine enabled the free migration of species. When the land masses were separated, the species were isolated and only those existing in southern areas managed to survive. The Blanding Turtle and the Southern Flying Squirrel are also unique to this area.

The Dalhousie team works with staff from the Parks Canada Species at Risk Office, including Stephen Flemming and Deborah Austin. In addition, they collaborate with Steve Mockford and Tom Herman, herpetologists at Acadia University.

“In the United States, there are lots of conservation canine programs, but nobody does the research quite like us. We find the species but we are also interested in the basic science, the learning processes,” says Dr. Gadbois.

Other potential applications for the research include using dogs to search for cancer, drugs, bedbugs, termites, contraband—even telephone pole rot. Dr. Gadbois was inspired by a humanitarian project sponsored by the United Nations which used dogs to find landmines.

LINK:  Found dogs to the rescue, a photo essay in Time Magazine