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You’ve probably seen dogs working security at airports, sniffing¹ for drugs, bombs and contraband² food. Now our best-friend biosensors might have a new task: ferretting out the scent⁴ of bird flu.

And they may not be alone on the job. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Monell Chemical Senses Center trained mice to identify duck droppings from animals infected with bird flu. The work was presented at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.

The scientists trained six mice to run a maze⁵ in search of infected feces. Every time they found the right feces, they got a drink of water. The mice learned to choose infected over noninfected duck feces about 90 percent of the time.

The researchers believe the implications could be twofold. First, bird flu apparently⁶ leaves an odor imprint⁷ on bird feces, and so dogs—and even mice—could be trained to recognize it. Second, scientists might be able to isolate⁸ the cocktail⁹ of compounds that gives off the odor to develop lab instruments or automated¹⁰ field detectors¹¹. Until then, we may find four-legged sensors³, large and small, sniffing away to protect us from a bird-borne epidemic¹².

Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber.