Wine Lovers Unite to Thank Sniffer Dogs for Saving Vineyards

Anyone who has travelled even a little over the past couple of decades is familiar with airport sniffer dogs trained to root out illicit contraband. Then there are those who can find missing persons, cadavers, or detect the onset of diseases, including Parkinsons, and Cancer. Some can identify the onset of a seizure or PTSD episode, while others can red-flag explosive devices. Then there are those dogs trained to sniff out computer electronics and even SIM cards (seriously) – so important when conducting search and seizure operations.

But this particular one speaks to my heart. It’s dogs that have been trained to sniff out the invasive Spotted Lanternfly, AKA the scourge of wineries across the country. And it’s not just wine lovers like myself that are applauding the sniffing credentials of these uber-trained dogs. This fast-spreading winged predator has the potential to eradicate a range of revenue-producing crops across 19 states.

With tiny, hard-to-spot eggs laid on the lower leaves of vegetation, the challenge has been for humans to detect this bug before it hatches, ages into adulthood and begins all that destructive noshing. At which point, millions of sap-sucking flies slowly yet surely deplete crops, causing them to wither and die. That’s why catching them early (in the pre-hatch stage) is critical.

Now, these eggs do have a scent, albeit not something the average human could detect when walking through an impacted field. But when you introduce a trained dog to the equation, you’re now able to track and remove these nests fairly quickly. Yes, the upside to using dogs is not only their superior olfactory sensory glands (upwards of 200 million compared to humans with just 20 million) but their ability to get into low, heavily vegetated areas where spotted lanternfly nests are found.

And no surprise that between superior sniffing capability and exceptional physical agility, these dogs were much more successful at tracking the nests of this “crop-decimating” bug than their human counterparts.

How much more successful? Of course. efficacy should always be evaluated, so the US Department of Agriculture funded the deployment of 26 teams of dogs and their handlers to test areas where infestations were not yet known. The goal? To determine not only how effective the dogs were at sniffing out the spotted lanternfly egg masses (compared with a human searching on foot) but also the range within which detection was possible.

To compare two-legged and four-legged searchers, humans were sent out to comb an area of vegetation for 10 minutes. Any recovered nests were then brought back. Following this, dogs were brought in to search for the same amount of time. On average, the dogs found three times as many nests as humans, and most were detected within 16 feet of their search path, with hits diminishing as the distance increased.

Why the distance was considered important in the evaluation of results came down to how the dogs would be used in the future. According to Professor Erica Feuerbacher of the School of Animal Sciences, “The distance testing helps us understand how these dogs need to be deployed. Handlers need to move methodically through an area, so dogs stay close enough to detect the odor.”

And for farmers across the country, that means early detection and crops that make it to harvest.