“Move over, doggies”: Chinese police trained squirrels to search for drugs

The sniffer dogs from the Chinese city of Chongqing have some cute furry rivals. Police officers working on new ways to train bloodhound animals successfully trained six squirrels to find drugs, and now the animals, along with officers, will be able to fight drug dealers.

Scientists have long known about the acute sense of smell of squirrels, but until now the methods of training rodents have not been sufficiently developed. With the help of their own developments, Chinese experts managed to teach protein to find prohibited substances by smell and scratch the place where they were found.

Bloodhound squirrels have already undergone several tests that have proven that their drug-detecting activities are as effective as those of search dogs. And the small size and speed of movement of the squirrels gives them an additional advantage, since they can climb into the highest and narrowest places that the dogs can never check.