At 02:40 AM 3/2/2006, you wrote:
<Do you know where and how scientists first got the idea to try and train
honeybees, instead of dogs, to sniff explosives in mine-fields?>
We know exactly how this came about, its a long story. We're the
innovators -- proposed and got the funding to do this.
Now, there's years of prior work -- we did 30 years of using bees as
environmental samplers. In 1995, we added on-hive electronics and went
looking for harmful materials at Aberdeen Proving Grounds -- where there's
lots of buried junk, much of it potentially toxic. APG was capping a VERY
hazardous waste site only 16 miles from Baltimore. All of the water coming
off the site was being cleaned by a water treatment plant and screened by
fish before being released in the BAY. Again, no one wanted an accidental
spill into waters near Baltimore. The guys doing the capping operated all
of the heavy machinery remotely, from a shed 1 mile away. The bees, bee
counters, and on-line communications provided an air warning system similar
to that of the fish. The air sampling instruments tended to give false
alarms with all of the heavy equipment -- no one was allowed anywhere near
that toxic dump while the heavy machinery was running. The bees were the
fall back -- as long as they didn't suddenly start dying, no one pushed the
panic button, evacuated Baltimore.
One day, I got a visit from another branch of DoD. They asked -- if bees
can locate, sample, and map hazardous chemicals, can they SHOW US where
they got them? Obviously, the DoD knew about dogs, operant
conditioning. My response was that I was reasonably sure this could be
done (just didn't know how good bees might be, whether they could detect
novel chemicals (not a floral scent, not a pheromone), and I didn't have
the equipment to put the whole system together. It took another year, but
by that time we had a major contract from DoD, and subcontracts to three
national labs, to pull all of this together.
Now DoD also knew about moths and their ability to locate mates 20 miles
away. They found the WASP HOUND group working on how wasps locate prey,
then (if the prey is out of reach down in the plant) mark the plant with a
chemical marker. They found Smith at OHIO working with proboscis extension
in response to odors. From my conversations, they didn't know about Adrian
until after we came on board. I recommended his book to them. So, they
found several groups working on insects. They also funded work to look at
beetles with infra-red sensors, birds, lobsters -- its a long list. And
not to be forgotten, the remote control rats.
At one point, Adrian was pulled into all of this by DoD, as was
InScentinel, a group in England that uses bees in a box to screen for all
sorts of things.
The DoD scouts were harvesting technologies from groups actively pushing
the edge of the envelope in this area. We got the nod because of our
long-term work using bees as sentinels AND all of our hardware and software
(for on-hive monitoring). The latter was a big issue to them.
Of all of these, the rats, wasps, and bees have continued, under other
funding -- and I suspect because of a dogged conviction by each of the
successful groups that there's real potential and use.
Jerry
P.S. Adrian has put in his two bits from time to time, and I greatly
appreciate and acknowledge his input. How we effect our conditioning is
different than his approach, and we had to turn to computer processors to
automate and fine-tune the system, but we both use odor to drive
bees. Note, our patents are not on conditioning bees, per se.
Also, my Ph.D. was in insect behavior, so this was a chance to go back to
my academic roots. Sampling chemicals is interesting, but I more enjoy the
behavioral topics and our technical toys.
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