World of the Bizarre

Police in China have trained squirrels to act as sniffer dogs

By T.K. Randall
February 18, 2023

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Thanks to their highly sensitive noses, dogs have been used by police forces for years to sniff out everything from concealed drugs to dead bodies.

In a bizarre twist, however, police in China have reportedly decided to try something a little bit different by training up six Eurasian red squirrels to sniff out illegal narcotics.

These particular animals are surprisingly adept at the task thanks to their keen sense of smell and small size which enables them to climb into places where drugs may have been stashed.

When one of them finds something, they alert their handler by scratching."The sense of smell of squirrels is quite sensitive," said police dog trainer Yin Jin.

"It's just that our technology in training rodents was not mature enough before."

While the training of the sniffer squirrels has gone surprisingly well, it may be some time before the animals will actually be deployed to detect drugs in a real-world scenario.

You can check out footage of them in action in the video below.


Source: Mail Online

Tags: Squirrels