Sniffer dogs can detect drugs, explosives, escaped prisoners and, it turns out, great crested newts.
New research published in PLOS ONE shows that a springer spaniel named Freya is able to detect the amphibians buried in the soil with nearly 90 per cent accuracy.
![Great crested newt (Triturus cristatus) on moss in spring. Females lack the crest of the males. © Sandra Sandbridge/Getty Great crested newt (Triturus cristatus) on moss in spring. Females lack the crest of the males. © Sandra Sandbridge/Getty](https://c02.purpledshub.com/uploads/sites/62/2023/06/Great-crested-newtSandra-SandbridgeGettyImages-1220277710-b958e7c.jpg?webp=1&w=1200)
Freya’s owner and collaborator is Nikki Glover, an ecologist at the University of Salford, who came up with the idea in 2014 while working on a reptile relocation project at a housing development.
“There was time pressure to find all these reptiles,” she says. “Then I came across an article about using dogs to find bat carcasses under wind turbines, so I got a puppy and went from there. Freya turned out to be amazing.”
Glover is hopeful that the technique will shed new light on the biology of great crested newts.
“We know a lot about them aquatically, but we don’t have much of a clue about what they do terrestrially,” she says. “This is a lovely non-invasive way to study that.”
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She is now consulting with biologists in Australia about detecting baw baw frogs, a Critically Endangered species that spends much of its life underground. “The possibilities of this method are endless,” she says.
Main image: Springer spaniel Freya has been trained to sniff out endangered great crested newts © Nick Upton for Wessex Water