14 DAY TRIAL // It wouldn't be the first time a dog is used to sniff out certain substances, but it is the first time a dog is used to sniff out proteins from a female polar bear's poop to determine if she is pregnant or not.
Elvis, a 2-year-old beagle is helping zoos all over North America to determine if their polar bears are pregnant or not. Even if the cute beagle never saw a polar bear in his life, he gets it right 97% of the time just from sniffing samples of poop sent by the zoos.
Everyone knows about police dogs trained to find illegal substances or dogs used for medical purposes who detect cancer or high sugar levels in the blood of diabetics, but not even dog trainer Matt Skogen thought about using a dog to determine pregnancies.
It all begun when Skogen received an e-mail from a Zoo in Cincinnati asking him to figure out a way to determine if the polar bears were pregnant. Female polar bears, in comparison with other mammals, only give birth four or five times in their life, usually having just one or two cubs.
Besides the low pregnancy rate, polar bears can also suffer from “pseudopregnancies” or fake pregnancies that can mislead care-takers and also throw-off pregnancy tests. Instead of anxiously waiting and keeping an eye on female polar bears to see if they give birth or not, the zoo's staff thought of finding another approach.
The staff reached out to Skogen and asked him to try and train a dog that could help them detect pregnancies. As unusual as it seemed, the trainer agreed and started working on training two dogs, Elvis and a border collie. He started with almost 200 samples of polar bear poop, placed in individual canisters under a wooden board, according to National Geographic.
From the two pooches, Elvis was guessing way too often, so Skogen decided to focus on him. With time, Elvis became even better, the dog was trained to sit and point his nose at the sample when finding the pregnant one. After just a few minutes of sniffing around, the dog would find the right sample and get rewarded with his favorite treats.
Elvis was tested several times, and most of the samples he chose turned out to be correct even if the test labs found them negative. The beagle's accuracy is as high as 97 percent, even better than some human-man pregnancy tests.
Now, zoos across America and Canada are using Elvis as their polar bear pregnancy test to know if they should prepare for welcoming some new Coca-Cola holiday commercial material in their care.