Armed with a sharp sense of smell, dogs have a long history of detecting explosives for their human handlers. Trained rats sniff out land mines from old African wars. In Croatia, researchers have tried to train bees to identify TNT.
Now elephants. New research conducted in South Africa and involving the U.S. military shows they excel at identifying explosives by smell, stirring speculation about whether their extraordinary ability can save lives.
"They work it out very, very quickly," said Sean Hensman, co-owner of a game reserve where three elephants passed the smell tests by sniffing at buckets and getting a treat of marula, a tasty fruit, when they showed that they recognized samples of TNT, a common explosive, by raising a front leg.
