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Sniffer dogs are being trained to track down threatened platypus populations – video
Zoos Victoria is training sniffer dogs to detect live platypus in their burrows as part of a research project to determine how the monotremes look after their young.
“One of the challenges with studying the platypus and why we still know very little about them is we as humans are not well designed to see them in their natural environment,” says Healesville Sanctuary platypus keeper Dr Jessica Thomas. “They are a little brown animal and they live in a brown habitat and they spend most of their time either swimming underwater or asleep underground in a burrow. And they’re nocturnal. Quite often they either may be there or they may not be there but you can’t see them."
The training methods are similar to those used on drug detection dogs, with two important differences: wildlife detection dogs need to be able to work in challenging and distracting environments, like a mountain stream, and they need to be safe and non-threatening toward any wildlife they encounter
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