How Dogs Can Sniff Out Diabetes and Cancer
Our pet canines can be trained to detect diseases in people—and they're amazingly good at it.
The Force is strong in Jedi.
The black Labrador retriever recently detected a drop in blood sugar in 7-year-old Luke Nuttall, who has Type 1 diabetes. His glucose monitor didn't pick it up, but Jedi did—and woke up Luke's mother, Dorrie Nuttall, as he was trained.
The California family's amazing story, which went viral on Facebook, made NatGeo's own Nicole Werbeck wonder, “How do dogs use their noses to detect human disease?”
Weird Animal Question of the Week sniffed out some answers.
And numerous studies have shown man's best friend can detect various cancers, including prostate cancer, colorectal cancer and melanoma.
Exactly what they are smelling—in other words what cancer and diabetes smell like—is not yet known, says Cindy Otto, founder and director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Vet Working Dog Center.
But there's evidence that diabetic alert dogs, or DADs, smell a
