I reluctantly admit that I am one of those people who love watching the aimless videos that pop up on social media, showing some cute animal, or animals, doing something remarkable. Which of course makes you feel even worse as a pet owner for being unable to get your dog to follow a simple command, like stop humping that other dog in the park. 

Our family dog Kipper is remarkable, he lives on the coast with my parents and we can safely take him to the busiest highway and be sure he will stay by our side. We literally taught him nothing, except maybe how to sneak into the house undetected and look extremely cute when he gets caught. However, despite the neglect from his owners in regards to his training, when we walk him on the beach in the early hours we now have the fishermen waiting beside the water for us to come down. The amazing Kipper dives in and drags up all the lobster pots, saving the men from entering the icy water. 

We would also take him down to sit with us while we were on surf life saving duty each weekend, he learnt how to swim out with us on the rescue board, wait until we picked someone up and drag the board back in. This of course made him a favourite on the beach, but it wasn’t as fun when we would take him surfing and he would try to rescue us, making it nearly impossible to catch a single wave. 

If you ever holiday in Malua Bay look out for the big labrador, that’ll be him.  

Now I think this constitutes my dog as remarkably intelligent, and until recently, I believed animals such as dogs were a mark above the rest, able to be trained in amazing forms of services.   

I have since discovered that the United States Navy are using dolphins and sea lions as anti-terror officers, Germany has recruited the help of Sherlock the vulture to find corpses and uses bees to test the air quality near eight airports, while loads of countries use dogs to detect drug smuggling.

When I think of service animals, I imagine guide dogs for the blind or sniffer doggers at festivals. Today, researchers have been able to train monkeys as service animals for quadriplegia and agoraphobia. There are guide miniature horses and goats for muscular dystrophy, parrots trained for psychosis. 

The most remarkable one I believe, was recently announced in June this year. In Israel sniffer mice are being trained to detect explosives at airports. More amazingly, they are doing a damn good job. 

The Israeli security firm funding the research claims that mice can detect explosives far more effectively than humans, dogs or machines. If the firm’s test is successful, airport security checkpoints of the future will deploy these small, furry creatures to trap terrorists and keep the skies safe.

Proponents of the firm describe the mice as cheap, and the best part being that you don’t have to take them for a walk. 

Although training details are vague at present, the concept is that researchers are able to teach them anything that has a scent – from explosives, to drugs, or even ivory from Africa. The idea is to train them to detect anything with a smell. It is fair to say that once they have been trained, they become a living, breathing, scampering biosensor. 

So how does it work? 

The mice aren’t designed to run loose over passengers and their bags, but are contained inside cages at security checkpoints. 

They discreetly sniff people and possessions for substances they have been trained to identify, and signal when they detect a threat. 

One of the benefits is that you can train a collective of mice, which in turn provides a more reliable result. 

The system has been under development for six years and successfully tested a number of times, the company are now training the rodents for use in various scenarios: air and ship cargo, agricultural shipments, vehicle inspections among others. 

Perhaps this is the future for the homeland security market, to hopefully combat the cat-and-mouse scrimmage with terrorism (I couldn’t resist!).