Some dogs have been shown to be capable of detecting cancer in humans. Recently, a group of scientists have revealed that ants have the same keen sense of smell.
Formica fusca ants were utilised by researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who educated them using a reward system. Researchers discovered that ants could determine the difference between healthy and malignant human cells within minutes after finishing the training.
The sugar solution was used as an incentive for the ants to identify the fragrance that the researchers intended them to detect.
The scientists put the ants’ memory to the test by putting them through trials with no incentives. They noticed that the ants spent a lot of time around the scent that they had been trained to respond to. They also discovered that the ants could distinguish between two cancer cell lines.
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Dogs are adept at sniffing out cancer, according to the CNRS, but the training procedure to make them proficient takes a long time.
As per the researchers, the study is the first to demonstrate the tremendous potential of ants as well as their rapid learning skills at a significantly cheaper cost while still being efficient. They also suggested that this might allow ants to detect other types of odours, such as drugs, explosives, or infectious illnesses.
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