These dogs have a nose for doo-doo

From elephant dung to DNA
Amid a booming black market for poached elephant ivory in Asia, Wasser’s team has taken a more high-tech approach to fight the decline of one of Africa’s signature species. Earlier this year, he and collaborators made headlines when they traced 6.5 tons of poached elephant ivory that had been shipped from Malawi and seized in Singapore in 2002 back to the savannas of Zambia.

Elephant dung, weighing up to 25 pounds per pile, may be an easy way to sniff out the animals.  But what about tracking the ivory? A crime lab in British Columbia working on extracting DNA from teeth invented a technique that Wasser’s lab has since modified, enabling them to pulverize super-cooled ivory into a fine powder from which DNA can be isolated.

Feces collected from wild elephants allowed his group to develop a genetic map of populations throughout sub-Saharan Africa. By comparing the ivory-derived DNA to the population map, the researchers have deduced the original locations of ivory tusks from multiple seizures. “We wanted to get at the big crime syndicates that are essentially driving this trade right now,” Wasser said. Identifying poaching hot spots and crime strategies can help determine how to concentrate law-enforcement efforts, he said, while identifying the origins of ivory forces countries to take responsibility for elephant-killing within their own borders.

Identifying whale feces can similarly help countries protect their native populations, including an estimated 300 North Atlantic right whales endangered by boat propellers and gill nets in Canada’s Bay of Fundy. Fortunately, the whales’ odoriferous orange feces float and can be readily detected by dogs trained with whale poop in floating Dixie cups. When they’ve sniffed out the scent, the dogs crouch low at the bow of the boat, as if poised to jump in the water. Experienced handlers can then direct the boat captain to angle back and forth to keep the vessel downwind of the scent trail while zeroing in on the source.

For an ongoing collaboration with the New England Aquarium in Boston, Mass., detection dogs have increased the sample numbers five-fold. So far, the whale feces have allowed researchers to distinguish adults from juveniles, males from females, pregnant from non-pregnant females and the mammals’ relative stress levels.

Gator, an Australian cattle dog, and Tucker, a black Labrador retriever, are likewise helping Wasser’s team track orcas in the Pacific Northwest. The orcas, or killer whales, have accumulated the highest levels of the banned industrial compound PCB of any mammal in the world, he said, and have been further impacted by tourism and declining numbers of Chinook salmon. Wasser said later that his group is refining a technique to measure PCB in orca feces along with the ubiquitous flame retardant PBDE, a chemical of concern that he calls “the new kid on the block.”

Alice Whitelaw, a co-founder of the Three Forks, Mont.-based Working Dogs for Conservation Foundation, along with fellow wildlife biologist Deborah Smith, said scientists have yet to fully tap the olfactory capabilities of our canine companions. As to their physical limits, Whitelaw said dogs likely wouldn’t be her first choice for studying cliff-hanging mountain goats, but they’ve nevertheless performed well in Wildlife Conservation Society-commissioned surveys tracking grizzlies, black bears, mountain lions and wolves within the isolated Centennial Mountains along the Montana-Idaho border. Some nesting bird populations likewise may be out of range, though Whitelaw and other biologists believe detection dogs may be good at tracking owl pellets.

Next March or April, Wasser’s dogs may do just that for the Pacific Northwest’s troubled Northern spotted owls and for barred owl invaders from the East. “Hooting” surveys have become unreliable in recent years, he said, because many spotted owls have stopped calling back to avoid drawing attention to themselves with the bigger barred owls on the prowl. Documenting up-to-date spotted owl habitat by tracking their pellets could prove critical for balancing wildlife conservation with timber interests.

The barred owls have become such a threat that some researchers believe modifying timber practices may do little to help their spotted owl prey, but some of Wasser’s early data suggest both the forest conditions and the presence or absence of barred owls matter to spotted owl populations — a hypothesis he hopes his dogs will put to the smell test starting next year.

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