The Amazing Adventures of Archibald Esq.
Dog Duties: Marine Conservationist
A dog trained to sniff out whale poop is joining the front line of conservation efforts to save the great Orca.
Gator, an Australian cattle dog, is a dog with a number of lives. He flunked out of the Department of Corrections school that trains drug-sniffing dogs. But now he’s an experienced scat tracker, and is learning the ropes of taking boat rides to sniff out the poop of orcas, a task scientists hope will help save the endangered marine mammals.
Scientists hope that Gator will soon be on the front lines of saving orcas. And Gator can enjoy the quiet satisfaction of knowing that he was the first dog in the world to sniff out orca droppings, which can tell scientists about the physical condition of the killer whales. Sam Wasser — a member of the research team at the University of Washington’s Center for Conservation Biology — noted that “It’s a fantastic way” to track endangered animals such as orcas “without seeing any animals at all..”
Gator is one of 11 scat-detection dogs at the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington, Seattle. Wasser, the center’s director, has been studying animals via their droppings for more than 20 years. He commented that eliminate sampling bias when collecting dung (as well as a little company on long boat rides), Wasser began employing detection dogs to track the scat.
Not just any dog can do the job. Detection dogs must be completely, utterly obsessed with their toys. “They’re not looking for scat at all,” Wasser says. “They want to play with their ball.” They’ll be given the chance only if they nose in on a sample. According to Wasser, “Gator can do black bear, grizzly bear, lynx, bobcat, puma, maned wolf, wolverine, fisher, killer whale, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and crack.”
Suddenly there was a small crisis. An elderly gentleman came strolling down the path with his pug, Epoonee, threatening to break Gator’s concentration.
Wasser gently explained to the man that he would have to wait a few minutes for Gator to move far enough off the trail so they could safely pass.
“Gator still has his potatoes,” Wasser said. “He doesn’t like for us to call them testicles, so we call them potatoes.”
Why isn’t Gator neutered?
“It keeps his drive up,” Wasser said.
Dogs’ first-class sense of smell means they’re frequently called upon to sniff out drugs and explosives. Clever canines have also been reported to be able to sniff out skin cancer and to identify, from samples of urine, those patients with prostate cancer. Only us dogs know what else we detect with our super-sensitive snouts!
For Wasser the “what else” is, at the moment, killer whale poop. And perhaps it goes without saying that tracking waste at sea presents challenges not faced on land. For some species with buoyant, easy-to-spot waste (right whales, for example, produce bright orange waste) those challenges are minimal. But orca poop is another thing entirely.
“Killer whale poop is hard to describe without being disgusting,” Wasser warns. “It’s bluish-greenish-black and gooey like snot” Gator, for his part, remains unfazed. He’s spent the summer training on the boat, sniffing out test samples. In August he’ll have started tracking wild orca scat.
The orca population in the Pacific Northwest has declined some 20% in the last 15 years. Figuring out why, says Wasser, has been a challenge. Some environmentalists have pointed to changes in the availability of Chinook salmon, the whales’ primary food source.
But orcas suffer plenty of other insults. Pollution in Puget Sound very likely increases the presence of pathogens, and PCB levels in the tissues of killer whales are an order of magnitude higher than in any other species. During the summer, whale-watching tour boats pursue the orcas relentlessly. In addition to the stress of being pursued, boats cause noise pollution, which may have an impact on whales’ sonar skills.
Wasser hopes to distinguish the factors that could be harming the whales. By studying their scat, he can retrieve information about diet and nutritional health. He can also measure concentrations of cortisol — the stress hormone — as well as levels of metabolism-regulating thyroid hormones. When food is scarce, hormone levels drop to slow the whale’s metabolic rate. PCBs and other toxins can also interfere with the production of thyroid hormones.
By measuring gonadal hormones, Wasser can tell if a female is pregnant and whether her pregnancy is healthy. He can also measure immune function.
The poop can also tell us where it originated. Wasser performs DNA analyses to identify individuals and track their health over time. “What makes this so powerful is really the amount of information we can get out of each sample,” he says.
He jokingly admits that colleagues have poo-poohed his work, and not always taken it seriously, but many are coming around. Some of his past collaborators started scat dog programs in other parts of the country, and Conservation International has expressed interest in establishing a program in Brazil.
“They live in a world of scent that we can only imagine,” said Rolland — who estimates Fargo, his trained Rottweiler, can smell samples at least 2 km away, even if there are only a few flecks left after the bulk of it has sunk.
Fargo, a purebred Rottweiler, was trained as a drug dog, but Rolland says when that didn’t work out he was sent to the Rockies to track grizzlies. His handlers, however, found that the husky beast overheated on the job and he had to look for other work.
His trainer and owner, Barbara Davenport thought the ocean climate would suit the middle-aged mutt better. She got in touch with Rolland, who outfitted the dog with a special harness and life-jacket, and then trained him by floating jars of scat on the water and getting the dog to find them.
“In the beginning, that was a little challenging because we had to make sure they didn’t leap off the boat,” she said, laughing. Now he’s got the hang of it: “the stronger the scent, the faster his tail wags and then we steer by his nose.”
And the program’s not only good news for Orcas, it’s also good news for dogs, giving those who have been rejected from a family or flunked out of training school and would otherwise end up in the pound another chance at life.
Which kind of makes one rethink a little the position of being completely against the use of dogs in scientific research, as this is a case where the dogs are trained to take part in scientific research have been taken from the pound, and no real harm has come to them. Indeed — they know their ‘potatoes’ (read ‘acorns’) are safe!
Superwoof! Though surely not a job for me — you know how I feel about damp or wet conditions! — it’s a commendable and adventurous existence. Yes; there’s all different kinds of work for all different kinds of dogs, awoof!
So superwoof to Gator and Fargo and their whale-poop-sniffing pals!
Archie
Posted 01 Dec 06
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