Bees can detect cancer through their acute sense of smell.
Adam Rifkin stashed this in Cancer
Portuguese designer Susana Soares has developed a device for detecting cancer and other serious diseases using trained bees. The bees are placed in a glass chamber into which the patient exhales; the bees fly into a smaller secondary chamber if they detect cancer.
Scientists have found that honey bees - Apis mellifera - have an extraordinary sense of smell that is more acute than that of a sniffer dog and can detect airborne molecules in the parts-per-trillion range.
Bees can be trained to detect specific chemical odours, including the biomarkers associated with diseases such as tuberculosis, lung, skin and pancreatic cancer.
Source: http://www.gizmag.com/bees-project-susana-soares/29981/
Imgur comments: http://imgur.com/gallery/WX8Jd
Stashed in: Science!, Bugs!, Best of Imgur, Factoids, Smells!
More about this project:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/11/25/honeybees-trained-to-sniff-out-cancer/
1:22 PM Mar 25 2014