An electronic nose that can detect the "smell of death," helping searchers recover bodies from disaster areas and aiding crime scene investigators to determine the exact time of death, is one step closer to wafting from the pages of science-fiction into real life.
— From Scientists on scent of death-detecting electronic nose at Canada.com.
To call it a step closer to science fiction is stretching it… think of the dogs trained to detect death by scent… I suppose it was only a matter of time before researchers came up with a safer alternative than using dogs who might otherwise be at risk in looking for disaster victims.
I read an article a few years ago about a cat being able to smell the chemical changes when death is imminent. The cat lived in a nursing home and would climb up on the bed and stay with patients until they died.
I remember that story too, and it was the first thing I thought of when I saw this post.
Hey, that was an episode of House — must have been taken from the article. In the show, it turned out to have nothing to do w/ the cat being able to sense death though.
A twist at the end of an episode of House? Say it aint so!
I do love me some Hugh Laurie, though. Tasty.
Aren’t ‘death’ molecules mostly indoles?
Don’t know, don’t wanna know.
Indoles, eh? Gives a whole new meaning to “death by jasmine…”
The web says this: “Indole can be produced by bacteria as a degradation product of the amino acid tryptophan.” So I would say…yes?
I thought they already had something like this.
Also, I just discovered recently at work that certain extermination companies use sniffing dogs to discover whether bedbugs are still present after treatment (and yes, bedbugs are baaaaaack, if you hadn’t heard already).
Yes, I knew, and just heard a horrific radio piece recently about a family in Brooklyn that’s been battling them for 2 years. Ugh.
I wonder what chemicals these are; they must be products of decomposition, if researchers are trying to establish time of death based on their presence or concentration. Cadaver-finding dogs can obviously smell them, but to determine when someone died is a nifty twist.
No idea…
I’m also reminded of dogs who can sniff out cancer and other diseases. Here is a good roundup of related anecdotes.
http://books.google.com/books?id=gbZXYnE2KlgC&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=cancer+how+dogs+think+tallahassee&source=bl&ots=kLNNI0JCQe&sig=LHQTmlqb_XqO7EgobxO6hgFj5oc&hl=en&ei=0ReLSv6CL5WvtgfQ9tHCDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Dogs are amazing.
Thanks!
I actually wanted to be a coroner at one point, so this is right up my creepy little alley. 🙂 I’ll have to look into it more, very interesting.
I’ve been tossing around the idea of mortuary science myself. And yes, dogs are amazing at predicting all sorts of odd weather or even knowing when their family members are in pain, hurt, due to arrive home. Cats are equally fascinating too.
So does this mean that if I were to pass away in a huge patch of wild jasmine and tuberose, this machine wouldn’t be able to locate me? What a way to go!
It also sounds like it’d be good for locating my youngest’s awful, smelly, dirty socks since he seems to enjoy stowing them in the most unlikely of places…
At least it isn’t my first impression when I saw the post tittle. I thought it was a new Goth perfume.
Yeah, I thought so too for a sec. lol
After that bit of Opus Oils news, though, who would blame you for thinking that?
HA!