Volume 171, October 2015, Pages 177–183
Highlights
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- African elephants were trained to detect TNT using olfaction.
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- Elephants can detect TNT reliably and with high accuracy.
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- Elephants have greater sensitivity accuracy compared to TNT-detection dogs.
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- As biosensors, elephants may require less training maintenance than dogs do.
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- African elephants show great potential as biosensors going forward.
Abstract
The
impact of war on local wildlife can be devastating, the effects of
which are often felt well beyond the terminus of the initial threat. In
areas where wildlife experiences unrestricted movement through
previously affected zones, residual, unexploded landmines present a
significant and potentially lethal problem. Anecdotal reports of African
elephants (Loxodonta africana), in a once war-torn Angola,
avoiding minefields together with telemetry data suggest that the
species may be able to detect concealed landmines using olfaction.
Before any in-field experiments can be conducted, an elephant's
olfactory capacity for the detection of the most commonly used component
in landmines, trinitrotoluene (TNT), needed to be established. Using
three African elephants under controlled conditions, we used operant
conditioning to test whether elephants are able to detect and reliably
indicate the presence of TNT using olfaction. Elephants detected and
indicated TNT using olfaction at levels greater than chance, with high
sensitivity and selectivity, even when in the presence of highly
volatile distractor odors. Additionally, the sensitivity of detection
surpasses that of TNT-detection dogs working under similar conditions,
suggesting that the potential application of African elephants within
the biosensor-field should not be underestimated.
Keywords
- Landmine detection;
- Olfactory acuity;
- African elephant
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
