A squad of six Eurasian red squirrels are trained to sniff out drugs where dogs can’t get.
An unusual initiative was launched in the Chinese city of Chongqing – in the fight against drug traffickers, none other than a detachment of Eurasian red squirrels came to the aid of law enforcement officers. The animals have successfully completed “training” and are now able to sniff out drugs in places where dogs could not reach them. Express.
Law enforcement officers note that the “members of the tailed detachment” were selected for a number of reasons, firstly, because of their quick learner, and secondly, because of their tiny size, which allows them to penetrate into places inaccessible to larger animals. As a result, the “squirrel special forces” have become part of the elite anti-drug department of a city in southwest China.
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It is assumed that Eurasian red squirrels will be used to search for drugs in especially large and complex facilities, such as logistics warehouses – here they will be able to survey the territory and help law enforcement officers find caches of drugs.
According to police dog handler Yin Jin, who led the squirrel training team, she and her colleagues did a great job and today the animals are doing “excellent” drug tests. During the training, dog handlers taught the squirrels to scratch suspicious boxes and packages with their claws, which should help inspectors discover a possible drug cache.
Yin notes that Eurasian red squirrels have a very keen sense of smell, and therefore they are ideally suited for this work. At the same time, cynologists note that it will take some time before the squirrel special forces are actually used in arrests, but years of work have not been wasted. Cynologists note that their methods of training rodents before, apparently, were not mature enough, but now everything has changed.
Note that law enforcement officers also shared footage showing how rodents scurry between canisters and boxes, and then sniff the right container to detect drugs.
It is assumed that over time, the squirrel special forces will become a full-fledged detachment of the drug control department, and therefore drug dealers should be wary, because tiny red “sniffers” are able to make their way into even the smallest cracks and find hidden caches.
Previously Focus wrote that scientists believe that warm winters have irreversibly changed sperm squirrels.