Meet Ernie and Betty White: Two Conservation Dogs Sniffing Out Invasive Species in Wisconsin
These aren’t the only Labradors using their powerful sense of smell to aid in wildlife preservation efforts
Seen here, conservation canine Betty White sniffs the ground while she trains to search for bumble bee nests. (Lindsay Hayward/Midwest Conservation Dogs, Inc. (MCDI))
By Elizabeth Gamillo
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
JANUARY 14, 2021 1:41PM
Dogs have an incredible sense of smell that is 10,000 to 100,000 times better than humans, giving them a nose up on the competition. That’s why they are often tapped to aid police work by sniffing out missing persons, explosives, and stolen items. Increasingly, canines' powerful snouts are used in conservation work as well, searching for both endangered and invasive species.
Now, two Milwaukee Labrador retrievers, Ernie, and Betty White, are using their schnozzes to search for New Zealand mud snails, an invasive species that has plagued Wisconsin waterways for the last decade, reports Ashley Stimpson for Atlas Obscura.
New Zealand mud snails were first discovered in the United States in Idaho in 1987, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. These snails are highly adaptable to various environments, and a single female mud snail and its offspring can produce 40 million snails in one year. The snails’ impressive ability to multiply creates populations so large they consume half of the available food in streams, outcompeting native species for sustenence.
The New Zealand mud snail is extremely small and hard to detect at one-eighth of an inch long, reports Atlas Obscura. Before Ernie and Betty White could sniff out the invasive snails and present their skills to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR), they underwent rigorous training.
More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-ernie-and-betty-white-two-conservation-dogs-sniffing-out-invasive-species-wisconsin-180976764/
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The Milwaukee Dogs That Learned to Sniff Out New Zealand Mud Snails
In a Wisconsin basement, two Labradors learned to detect tiny aquatic hitchhikers.
BY ASHLEY STIMPSON
JANUARY 11, 2021
Ernie's training culminated with a parking-lot demonstration of sniffing prowess. COURTESY MCDI
THE BASEMENT OF LAURA HOLDER’S 1925 bungalow looks like many others in her Milwaukee neighborhood. Dappled sunlight streams through glass-block windows onto an assortment of exercise equipment and her husband’s woodworking tools. An unfinished corner houses the washer and dryer and a second fridge and freezer.
But instead of meat and leftovers, Holder’s basement freezer is full of dirt. Eighty-five bags of sediment, to be exact, double-bagged, numbered, and frozen solid. They were collected by biologists with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) and sent to Holder’s home, which doubles as the headquarters of Midwest Conservation Dogs Incorporated (MCDI), the organization she oversees. (It will be renamed Conservation Dogs Collective in early 2021.)
One day, MCDI’s Labrador retrievers, Ernie and Betty White, may patrol state-run boat ramps the way dogs have for years canvassed airport security lines. Instead of sniffing for bombs or drugs, they’ll be inspecting anglers for invasive snails smaller than a peppercorn.
The snails are only one-eighth of an inch long. Here, they’re viewed under a microscope. UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY/PUBLIC DOMAIN
At one-eighth of an inch long, New Zealand Mud Snails are so tiny, “you don’t realize they’re there until you’ve got thousands of them,” says Maureen Ferry, Statewide Aquatic Invasive Species Monitoring Lead for the WDNR. The snails’ diminutive size—as well as their ability to survive out of water for 24 hours and on damp surfaces for 50 days—has allowed them to spread from rivers in the American West, where they were introduced in the mid-1980s, to the Great Lakes states. Once established, mud snail populations explode almost instantaneously. One female and its offspring can produce 40 million snails in a year, quickly outcompeting native creatures for food.
More:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/conservation-dogs-detecting-mud-snails?fbclid=IwAR2FvbRGrBRDVXy-S1jfoPA7ZeJsxJBTMCadLQGTwcLqjIAlaoRmcFfay30