Longtime victims of landmine contamination in Angola and other southern African countries, elephants are now being considered for a demining role by a research team at the South African University of Witwatersrand.
Elephants have over 2000 genes associated with olfactory reception compared to the 811 possessed by dogs. In trials, elephants were 99.7% accurate in detecting TNT samples.
“Our findings indicate that elephants are almost 5% more likely than dogs to indicate the presence of TNT when, in fact, there is none. But dogs are almost 6% more likely to miss TNT than elephants are. It’s obviously better for TNT detectors to be prone to false positives rather than false negatives: in fact it could be the difference between life and death.”
Although elephants are too large to be in-field detectors, their sensitivity and longevity make them ideal for conducting screening of off-site samples.
Read the full story here, and remember to subscribe to our CLMF email for more updates on ongoing demining activities.
