Scientists have discovered ants can detect the scent of cancer in urine.
It’s known several cancers can alter the smell of urine but not that ants could be used to identify patients.
The insects could be used in a cost-effective way, reports study author Professor Patrizia d’Ettorre, of Sorbonne Paris Nord University in Paris, France.
Prof d’Ettorre added:
“Ants can be used as bio-detectors to discriminate healthy individuals from tumour-bearing ones.
“They are easy to train, learn fast, are very efficient and are not expensive to keep.”
The findings were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
The research team under Prof d’Ettorre had already proven ants could smell out lab grown human cancer cells.
This time the tests were carried out on mice with and without tumours.
After three trials the 70 ants could detect the different mice.
Prof d’Ettorre said: “We trained them with associative learning to associate a given odour – cancer – with a reward and, after very few trials, they learned the association.
“We demonstrated that ants can discriminate the urine of healthy mice from the urine of tumour-bearing mice.
“This is more similar to a real-life situation than using cultured cancer cells.
“We were surprised by how efficient and reliable the ants are.”
Now, researchers want to see if the ants can do the same for human urine.