Mary Allen
The Saxony Police College has opened up new horizons that are unique in the world, the Saxony Police report. Police chief Leif Woidtke, forensic expert Dr. Karsten Babian, 190 test subjects, four Saxon police officers, and three private dog handlers investigated the sense of smell of dogs as part of a research project at the University of Leipzig.
What Can a Dog’s Sense of Smell Do?
How reliably can the individual footprint of a person be recorded in real police conditions and how old can these footprints be so that dogs can still find them? It was this question that the researchers were interested in. To answer this question, researchers had to deal with DNA.
The experiments have been carried out for 18 months since 2014 on seven dogs of different trained breeds. In addition to sweat and saliva, blood samples were also taken from several subjects. The forensic experts at the Leipzig University School of Medicine extracted DNA from them. Then it was placed in a special liquid and dripped onto a suitable stand. It was then presented to the dogs as the only trace of the scent, according to the Saxony police report.
Important Results for Law Enforcement
Result: Police trained dogs found test subjects 80% of the time, even if they only knew their DNA. Thus, for the first time in the world, it was possible to show that DNA samples contain sufficient characteristics for individual tracking of a person’s odor trail. The results of the study confirm the forensic evidence value. Therefore, these findings are of great importance, in particular, for law enforcement agencies. Because it can also prove, among other things, whether the suspect was at the crime scene or not, the Saxony police explain.
This research serves as the first step towards understanding what abilities dogs have. Now it is necessary to further clarify whether the odor stimuli that the dog perceives when tracking in the environment and using it for its search are also based on DNA.