Dogs are already one of the most adorable beings on planet Earth, but you’ll now love them even more. A recent study conducted by Florida’s BioScentDx showed that dogs are able to sniff out cancer with an amazing 97 percent accuracy.
BioScentDx presented the findings of their study at the Experimental Biology conference held in Florida. During the research, they trained four beagles to differentiate the healthy blood serum and blood samples from people who have a malignant lung cancer using a technique called “clicker training.”
And while one of the dogs, named Snuggles, was “unmotivated to perform,” other three dogs were managed to recognize lung cancer samples 96.7 percent of the time. The dogs also identified the healthy blood samples 97.5 percent of the time.
“Although there is currently no cure for cancer, early detection offers the best hope of survival,” said Heather Junqueira, who is a lead researcher at BioScentDx and performed the study. “A highly sensitive test for detecting cancer could potentially save thousands of lives and change the way the disease is treated.”
BioScentDx hopes to build on this successful study and use the super-sensitive noses of dogs to develop “non-invasive way of screening for cancer and other life-threatening diseases.” They also plan to conduct another study in November in which they would see whether dogs can sniff out breast cancer with the same success rate.
