Animals_Can_Sniff_Cancers_Out_动物嗅癌

N ext time you’re irritated that ants have gotten into your kitchen, you might take a moment to consider their extraordinary powers of perception.
2 These tiny animals can detect mark-ers of illness, such as cancer. In fact, ants are just one of many creatures whose senses can register signs of hu-man disease: dogs, rats, bees, and even tiny worms can as well.
3 Here’s what we know about these animals and their incredible abilities.
Working ants
array of complex signals.
9 These ants also don’t sting and are “inexpensive to get and maintain. Honey and dead insects, and ants are happy,” Piqueret says. This makes them excellent candidates for such work.
10 What exact chemicals the ants are smelling is unknown, says d’Ettorre, which is often the case with the other cancer-detecting animals.
A human’s best friend
11 Dogs can be trained to smell several types of cancers, including melanoma, breast and gastrointestinal cancers and some infectious diseases in humans, in-cluding malaria. In the U.S, dogs have worked in the field screening people for COVID-19, including at some schools in California, in several locations in Massachusetts, and at Miami Heat bas-ketball games.
fied as positive. But if the rat alerts to a sample already thought to be negative, it’s sent on to be evaluated using a more expensive test.
According to APOPO, since the pro-gram’s inception, the rats have detected more than 23,000 cases missed by local health clinics.
“They’ve increased case detection by around 50 percent over partnering health clinics,” says Fast, clearly proud of the furry diagnosticians.
An intelligent worm
Smaller still than a honeybee is the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a worm-like creature approximately the size of a sand grain that is commonly used in lab research. It has disease genes that are very much like our own, making it a valuable model organism for scientific study. It’s also transparent, so its biological processes are easily。