BZZZZZ--Say good-bye to those big scary dogs on the street, train stations and airports and say hello to Bees! The importance bees have to our Ecosystem is commonly known. After all, 1/3 of our food supply rely on their pollination of crops and plants. However, bees are becoming increasingly important to our country's safety and defense against biological warfare as well. Bees have an extremely acute sense of smell, stronger than dogs or chemical detectors. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been involved in this research since 1999. The program funded a program to train bees using classical conditioning to detect landmines throughout thousands of acres of land. Rather than training the bees to respond to a desirable scene, such as a flower, they were trained to respond to the odor of TNT. Their reward was a taste of sweet syrup. The trainers then attached small diodes onto the backs of TNT-trained bees and used hand held radar tracking devices to chart where the bees went. This type of technology and experiments are on the rise and can be extremely beneficial in the future. The VASOR136 has just been invented by Inscentinal Ltd. This device contains 36 cartridges with one bee in each cartridge that have already been trained to detect a certain scent in the air. "When an operator presses a button on the VASOR, an air sample is taken from the environment that exposes the bees to ambient, unfiltered air. If the bees have been trained to respond to a vapor in that air, the bees will exhibit a PER response and the response will be translated by the VASOR into a simple result shown on the PDA screen display. "
Anyone else feel bad about all the bees you have stomped on or swatted?
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