{"id":10886,"date":"2021-06-21T15:44:25","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T08:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/illume-emag.com\/?p=10886"},"modified":"2022-01-12T16:58:29","modified_gmt":"2022-01-13T00:58:29","slug":"scientists-have-taught-bees-to-smell-the-coronavirus-they-can-identify-a-case-within-seconds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/scientists-have-taught-bees-to-smell-the-coronavirus-they-can-identify-a-case-within-seconds\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists have taught bees to smell the coronavirus. They can identify a case within seconds"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The research was conducted on more than 150 bees in Wageningen University\u2019s bio-veterinary research laboratory.<\/p>\n

The scientists trained the bees by giving them a treat \u2014 a sugar-water solution \u2014 every time they were exposed to the scent of a mink infected with COVID-19. Each time the bees were exposed to a non-infected sample, they wouldn\u2019t get a reward (a process known as Pavlovian conditioning).<\/p>\n

Eventually, the bees could identify an infected sample within a few seconds \u2014 and would then stick out their tongues like clockwork to collect the sugar water.<\/p>\n

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Bees aren\u2019t the first animals to detect COVID-19 by scent. Researchers have also trained dogs to distinguish between positive and negative COVID-19 samples from human saliva or sweat with fairly high levels of accuracy. A small German study found that dogs could identify positive COVID-19 samples 94% of the time.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because metabolic changes from the coronavirus make an infected person\u2019s bodily fluids smell slightly different than those of a non-infected person.<\/p>\n

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But researchers still aren\u2019t sure whether animals are the best bet for sniffing out COVID-19 cases outside the lab.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one is saying they can replace a PCR machine, but they could be very promising,\u201d Holger Volk, a veterinary neurologist, told Nature. PCR machines are what lab technicians use to process standard COVID-19 swab tests.<\/p>\n

At the very least, certain animals could be useful for identifying COVID-19 in places or countries in which high-tech laboratory equipment is scarce or inaccessible.<\/p>\n

Wageningen scientists, for instance, are working on a prototype of a machine that could automatically train multiple bees at once, then uses their skills to test for coronavirus aerosols (tiny virus-laden particles) in the surrounding environment.<\/p>\n

Source: Businessinsider<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The research was conducted on more than 150 bees in Wageningen University\u2019s bio-veterinary research laboratory. The scientists trained the bees by giving them a treat \u2014 a sugar-water solution \u2014 every time they were exposed to the scent of a mink infected with COVID-19. Each time the bees were exposed to a non-infected sample, they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10890,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13321,13318,17],"tags":[5828,1087,5830,5734,2488],"class_list":{"0":"post-10886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-life","8":"category-mind-posivity","9":"category-wellness-tips","10":"tag-bees","11":"tag-coronavirus","12":"tag-dogs","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-illume-magazine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lavyon.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}