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http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20061127/tc_usatoday/honeybeesjointhebombsquad..."Honeybees are as good as dogs," Haartmann says. The trick, it turns out, is training the little critters to detect bomb scents. Some bees, exposed to the scents of bomb ingredients and rewarded with sugar water, get it right away. Others wash out, a surprise given that insects are seen as automatons because their behavior is so uniform, Haartmann says.
So far, his team has trained bees to pick up the scent with their antennae and then flick their proboscises - a tubular feeding organ that extends from the mouth - when exposed to TNT, howitzer propellant and liquid-explosives ingredients at a level in the air of a few parts per trillion. Bees are natural-born sniffers, antennae sensing pollen in the wind and tracking it down to the flowers that are a food source for their hives.[continued]
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