When a major disaster occurs, rescuers often have to search for the bodies of dead people in the rubble of buildings or under piles of garbage brought by the tsunami. In some cases, they are helped by specially trained search dogs, whose sense of smell can even detect corpses under water. To train such dogs, it is necessary to distinguish the unique "smell of death" so that they can, with 100% probability, detect the dead. It is on the allocation of this smell for more than ten years, scientists from several countries worked.
This work can hardly be called especially pleasant, because every day the researchers had to study the corpses of people and animals in an attempt to identify a unique chemical cocktail that can help in the training of search dogs. Research in this area began in 2004 within the walls of the American company The Body Farm. The company's specialists studied the gases emitted by the body in the later stages of tissue decomposition. A small Greek company helped them in this, which, on the contrary, explored the very beginning of the expansion. Scientists managed to make up a rather long list of organic compounds, but they could not agree on what they could be called the human “smell of death”.
In 2010, a team of Belgian rescuers turned to chemist Eva Coopers, head of the forensic toxicology laboratory at the University of Leuven, to help them develop the best program for training search dogs. Laboratory staff are faced with a daunting task. For a long time, they examined human remains, as well as organs of mice, moles, rabbits, turtles, frogs, fish, birds and other animals. In the course of the research, more than 452 organic compounds in gases, which are released during the decomposition of corpses, were identified.
The answer to the tormenting scientists question was found in compounds that are called ethers and appear due to animal fats. In humans and pigs there were eight unique ethers that distinguish them from the rest of the animal world. It should be noted here that human and pig biology are very similar: we share the same microbes, we have the same percentage of fat in our bodies, and even the hair of a man and a pig are essentially the same. In the course of further research, it turned out that the smells of human and pig remains differ from each other in a set of five ethers. It is this “smell of death” that will be used by rescue teams to train search dogs in the future.
This finding is very important, but research is still far from complete. The ideal substance for dog training has yet to be developed. Scientists will need some time for this. And even now, when they are so close to the clue, the researchers are not sure that the task can be solved 100% true, because laboratory tests are very far from the conditions in which human remains after various disasters and natural disasters.
The article is based on materials .
Comments
Post a Comment