Bomb Sniffing . . . Pigs?

The BBC reported in October on efforts by a former Israeli army dog trainer to develop bomb-sniffing pigs.

Greva Zion told the BBC that he believes he can not only train pigs to detect explosives, but that they may actually be easier to train than dogs. Zion told the BBC,

The pigs work and understand very quickly, maybe half of the time of the dogs. Dogs must be trained when they are puppies, with the pigs we don’t need it, because they like to eat and they like to dig.

Of course, deploying bomb-sniffing pigs in Israel might pose a problem due to religious taboos related to pigs.

Source:

Israel’s ‘bomb squad pigs’. The BBC, October 2, 2003.

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