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discussion / Conservation Dogs  / 8 August 2016

Reptile Detector Dogs

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I was fascinated to discover that detector dogs can be used to locate difficult to find snakes:

E.Kingsnake-looking ALL year for one! Amid the roots in a fallen tree&pointed out by Kingsley the Herp detector dog! pic.twitter.com/nj3URUqWXt

— Denim Jochimsen (@vintage_denim) July 30, 2016

I'd love to hear more about how detector dogs are being used for wildlife conservation. Are you working with detector dogs? How do they help in your work?



Yvan Satgé
@YvanSG  | he/him
Clemson University
Seabird ecologist at Clemson University, South Carolina Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. Co-chair of Caribbean Seabird Working Group.
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14 May 2018 9:37pm

Hi Steph and all,

I don't work with detector dogs directly but colleagues of mine in the Pedernales province of the Dominican Republic have used a dog to locate iguana nests in a dry environment. Iguana nests (which are underground) can be found by looking for a typical hole in the ground; unfortunately, a local species of spider makes a very similar hole, which make iguana nest searches difficult (since you don't want to break the nest open) and time-consuming. Biologists at Grupo Jaragua, a Dominican environmental NGO, thus trained a dog to successfuly smell for iguana nests. 

Their dog sadly died after eating poison intended to kill stray dogs but did find a number of iguana nests for several years.

- Yvan