Many animals are just as intelligent as humans and can be trained to do amazing things even human can’t do. They can be trained to guide people, calm people, find people, and sniff out drugs or bombs.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; Customs and Border Protection; local law enforcement and private security companies employ bomb-sniffing dogs that are properly trained and conditioned for the job.
“Classical conditioning techniques using food rewards and toys,” Slate explains. “In early phases of training, the dog is told to sit each time he finds the odor—that becomes the signal he uses to alert his handler when a bomb is present. The dog is fed only when in the presence of the explosive. Using a food reward instead of praise and play prevents an exclusive bond between dog and handler, which might prevent the dog from working well with others.”
These dogs are required to learn to recognize the active ingredients that could be found in a bomb.
“Trainers expose the canine to signature compounds that are found in many different types of explosives,” Slate explains. “In this way, a dog can be trained to detect all manner of bombs by memorizing a dozen or so smells. Some bomb components are more odoriferous than others.”
We’re not sure what if any training this dog received, but a guard dog at a Nigerian wedding found something suspicious about one of the female guests.
Wedding guest Buba Abhmed of Belbelo village, near the northeastern city of Maiduguri, told Daily Mail that the teenage woman situated herself on the outskirts of the crowd where many villagers were attending the wedding ceremony.
Little did anyone know, other than the dog, that the woman was hiding a bomb under her dress and planned to detonate it in the middle of the crowd in order to kill as many people at wedding as she could.
The dog instinctually pounced on the woman that Sunday morning and wrestled with her until her explosives detonated, killing the bomber and the dog.
Many say that Boko Haram Islamic extremists are responsible for the wedding suicide bombs and that the incident at the wedding wasn’t the only one to take place that day.
“A multinational force has driven Boko Haram Islamic extremists out of most towns and villages in northeastern Nigeria, but the extremists have resorted to attacking soft targets with suicide bombers,” the Daily Mail writes. “Meanwhile, Nigerian police confirmed that three suicide bombers blew themselves up attempting to get into Maiduguri on Sunday morning.”
Dozens of people have been killed in these types of attacks but many have been thwarted by soldiers, local militias, civilians, and brave dogs like this one.
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