Sniffer dog has an unusual sniffing job

If working dogs worried about the status of their jobs like humans do, Tucker the sniffer dog might lie to the other dogs about what he does.

Tucker doesn’t sniff out cool stuff like money, drugs, fugitives, missing children, harmful insects or invasive plants. Tucker sniffs out whale poop.

In fact Tucker is the most important member of the crew searching for whale poop because he is the one they depend on to find it up to a mile away.

Killer whales in Puget Sound were placed on the endangered species list in 2005 and they are not recovering. A team of researchers is trying to find out why by studying their poop or what they consider “scientific gold.”

According to Sam Wasser, the director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington, scientists have developed techniques to analyze feces from all over the world. He calls it scientific gold.

"We can measure the diet of the animal. We can get toxins from the feces, DNA so we can tell the individual's identity, its species, its sex — and all of this is in feces," he says. "So it's literally a treasure trove of information."

But finding whale poop isn’t easy and so the team added Tucker.

Tucker is an 8-year-old black Lab mix. He's what those in the dog world call "ball-obsessed." He'll do anything for a game of fetch — even if that means sniffing out floating whale scat from a mile away — because he knows that when he finds the scat, he gets to play with his ball.

As the boat zeros in on a pod of whales, Tucker is relaxed. But when he gets a whiff of “scientific gold,” he gets very excited and the crew attempts to locate it floating on the surface.

Tucker is referred to as their “scat-detection dog” which is actually a pretty important sounding job title.

Comments

[Jerry]

sniffing scientific gold is better sounding than whale pooper snooper.

[Kristine]

Scat sniffing dog... I like it! There is no limit to what we can teach dogs to do, is there? It really is all about finding a dog's currency. Or, in this case, finding the right tennis ball. :-)

[john]

Wouldn't whale poop smell so strong that evven humans could smell it?

[geogia little pea]

Sounds like it might make a good episode of Dirty Jobs! So whale poop are floaters? Yegods. Imagine the size of them. Maybe it's a good idea not to go swimming with whales.

[Karen Friesecke]

Dirty jobs, indeed. I wouldn't want to be the person that had to collect the scat.

[jackie]

I'm at a loss for words.

[Pamela]

I never know what I'm going to learn when I stop by the Poodle and Dog blog. Just now, I learned that whale poop floats.

Which makes me feel just a little more cautious about trailing my hands in the water when kayaking.

[Jen]

Clearly, Tucker should have been named Ahab instead ;)

[Jodi]

Delilah would like to apply for the position. She would want to eat it though.

[Pup Fan]

This is really interesting! I think Tucker has a pretty fascinating job, actually. Most of the other dogs would be jealous.

[Linda]

Hum....I think dogs LOVE to find stuff like that! At least mine do!

Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com