Honeybees Trained to Find Landmines

KingMeer writes "A group of researchers at the University of Montana have trained honeybees to seek out landmines. Apparently they are much more effective than dogs, making them a practical tool for finding the 110 million landmines worldwide."

Comments

Now I wonder

[inerte]

If you could "mark" the bees with a substance that could be seen by a radar and automatically launch something to explode the mine.

Re:Now I wonder

[p3d0]

From here:

In coming weeks, the team plans the first field tests of a new radio transmitter, the size of a grain of salt, that could allow individual bees to be tracked as they follow diffuse trails of bomb ingredients to a source. Such a system would help if bees were used to search a wide area for hidden explosives.

Another Advantage Over Dogs

[greenhide]

...Bees are much lighter. Unless I'm mistaken, a dog used to sniff out a mine could easily set it off, even if it were careful. The mines are sensitive enough to go off when a small child steps on them, so they are clearly sensitive enough for dogs. Bees, on the other hand, weigh close to nothing and probably would not ever be able to set off a mine.

The question is: once a bee pinpoints a mine (by landing it, I suppose), how is that mine put out of comission?

Finally: I can understand how dogs can be trained and motivated to do this sort of thing. What incentive would make these bees "do our bidding"?

Re:Another Advantage Over Dogs

[gnovos]

True true, well said... but I can't help but think that the best solution would be dogs that shoot bees out of thier mouths. :)

Re:Another Advantage Over Dogs

[nanojath]

"The question is: once a bee pinpoints a mine (by landing it, I suppose), how is that mine put out of comission?"

I understand they're training ants to dig them up...

But if we work together...

[jvmatthe]

I can see the landmines taunting the landmine-finding crew:

"What are you gonna do? Release the dogs? Release the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouths so that when they bark they shoot bees at you?"

Sorry, but when someone mentions bees and dogs, I can't help but think of that quote from Homer.

Sugar is the reward

[GuyMannDude]

Scientists have found that it takes less than two hours to use sugar-water rewards to condition a hive of honeybees to eschew flowers and instead hunt for 2,4-dinitrotoluene, or DNT, a residue in TNT and other explosives, in concentrations as tiny as a few thousandths of a part per trillion.

Taken from a previous NYT article (mirror 1, mirror 2)

GMD

Re:Sugar is the reward

[Observer]

Scientists have found that it takes less than two hours to use sugar-water rewards to condition a hive of honeybees to eschew flowers and instead hunt for 2,4-dinitrotoluene, or DNT, a residue in TNT and other explosives, in concentrations as tiny as a few thousandths of a part per trillion.

The downside is that you have to be very careful when you're processing the honey they produce....

Karma: Overated: mostly due to - oh, WTF, who cares any more?

Re:Sugar is the reward

[p3d0]

If it's so easy to train them, I wonder if it would be easy to un-train them. For instance, someone wanting to smuggle something could quietly spill some sugar water on the road, and when that first bee finds it, the whole hive will be too distracted to look for explosives or drugs.

Bee Dance

[GuyMannDude]

They do their bee dance of course. Bees have a very intricate dance that shows other bees where pollen is, I think scientists had learned how to interpret this dance, if the bees returned and did their dance, humans could go and detonate the mine, or the bees could collectivly sting it repeatedly.

A rare video clip of a person trying to imitate the bee dance can be seen here. Although he's a bit heavier than a bee and the dance isn't very intricate, if you saw this happening, it would sure get your attention!

GMD

I was already paranoid when I went to the airport

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

I think I'm going to stop flying altogether if I have to get checked by bees.

What happens if you swat one of them? They try and charge you with killing a federal officer if you kill a police dog, so what about the bomb-sniffing bees? Would I find myself in the federal pen for smashing a bee?

On a more serious note, what if the bees all swarm over the bomb-disposal equipment instead of the landmines? The article says that they are just looking for DNT particles, in the parts per trillion range, so wouldn't this be present on the bomb-disposal equipment?

Re:This is redundant, is redundant, is ...

[itwerx]

Not only that but it's OLD news! I've been reading about this in one journal or another for over ten years...!

Re:i really hope...

[Scrameustache]

that this works out better than our last experiment with using bees to our advantage ;)


The whole "making honey" thing? Yeah, that was SUCH a mess! I mean, that never worked, did it?

Re:Finally, a cool advance in minesweeping.

[Scrameustache]

What advances have there been in landmine-finding technology in the last thirty years?

This boot.

110 Million Landmines?

[Katravax]

Holy crap -- are there really 110 million landmines buried around the world? According to the article 26,000 people are killed or injured yearly by them. This blows my mind. I'm seriously asking: where are these things?

If I'm doing my math right, which I'm probably not, assuming each land mine is a cylinder 1 inch tall and 6 inches in diameter, 110,000,000 of these things would form a cube 33 miles on each side. Are there really that many?

Re:110 Million Landmines?

[dmadole]

If I'm doing my math right, which I'm probably not, assuming each land mine is a cylinder 1 inch tall and 6 inches in diameter, 110,000,000 of these things would form a cube 33 miles on each side. Are there really that many?

Well, at least you were right when you said you were probably doing your math wrong.

If they were 1 inch tall and 6 inches in diameter and you stacked them based on a square grid:

The space each mine occupies in the grid is:

1 in x 6 in x 6 in = 36 in^3
36 in^3 / 12 in / 12 in / 12 in = 0.0208333 ft^3

So 110,000,000 of them are:

.0208333 ft^3 x 110,000,000 = 2,291,666.666 ft^3
2,291,666.666 ft^3 ^ (1/3) = 131.841 ft

So, they would make a cube only 131 ft 10 inches.

Of course, if they are really round, you could stack each layer honeycomb-style and the cube would be even smaller. As they say, the solution is left as an exercise for the reader.

Screw this

[devphil]

I want landmines trained to hunt down bees.

Pesky annoying fuckers.

Re:Finally, a cool advance in minesweeping.

[Scrameustache]

If you send people jogging in the mine field with it its mine-finding tech ;- )

Re:Finally, a cool advance in minesweeping.

[Scrameustache]

This could be the next big extreem sport! Mine Jogging!

The new craze that's sweeping the nation!

Re:Uh, no... Killer Bees.

[Scrameustache]

Heard of killer bees?

Sure...

They were invented by combining African bees with European Honeybees, in order to get a honeybee that could thrive in the more tropical regions in Brazil.

That was the plan.

Of course genetic engineering will take the two best features, right?

It wasn't genetic engineering, it was cross breeding...

But no, it picked the two worst. Instead of quickly reproducing gentle honeybees, they got quickly reproducing aggressive attackbees... So, yeah, it was "SUCH a mess".

That's not exactly what happened.
They were halfway throught the cross breeding program, using hives with metal plaques nailed to the only opening that had a slit wide enough for workers but too narrow for queens, hence preventing "swarming" and the release of reproducting bees in the environment.
One weekend, someone came to the hives, removed the plaques using tools found on site and let the bees out.

It wasn't science run amock, it was either willfull sabotage or tremendous human stupidity.
Someone made the effort of removing nailed plaques, not the scientist's fault.