Israeli company trains mice to detect drugs and explosives
Rodents react to suspicious materials passing through system developed by Israeli company
An Israeli company is aiming to revolutionise the way explosives, narcotics and even money are detected at airports, docks and border crossings with the help of specially trained covert agents.
But these are not just any regular agents. They are mice, which are being used as sniffer animals for the first time
The system, developed by the Herzliya-based BioExplorers, is simple: a traveller stands inside a small booth and is hit by a gentle blast of air that is then sucked into a small opaque chamber, where a group of eight mice are on duty.
After eight seconds, assuming the subject is all clear, a green light appears and the barrier opens. But if the air smells of a suspicious material the mice have been trained to detect, they gather in the "reporting compartment", which raises an alarm.
"The idea began in 2000-2001, when there were many suicide bombings on [Israeli] buses," said BioExplorers founder and chief technology officer Eran Lumbroso at the Israel Homeland Security exhibition in Tel Aviv, where he displayed his mechanism for the first time.
"I was in the army at the time, and the idea emerged to use small animals instead of dogs in detecting suicide bombers."
After leaving the army in 2004, Lumbroso continued work on the project, running tests with different types of animals, portals and training methods.