Trivia Question of the Day:***** # 70707.

ROLCAM

Trivia Question of the Day:

How do the police train dogs to find hidden drugs?

Answer: Assuming that there is nothing in nature that inherently links canine and cannabis, how the heck do they get dogs to develop a nose for wacky weed? Or for heroin? Do they end up dissipated dogs, baying at the moon in broad daylight?

Essentially, the dog is taught through the use of its instinct to retrieve. What it fetches is marijuana, wrapped carefully so the animal can't bite into the package and get high, but loosely enough so that the smell becomes familiar. When the fetching becomes routine, the marijuana is hidden so that the dog must sniff for it. Then the drug is placed in a bag and hidden. (You can see where this escalating game is headed--the airport baggage department.) Heroin is treated similarly, except that the real stuff is so potent that a like-smelling artificial substance is used in initial training to keep the dog from nodding out.
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Roland Camilleri

Moderator

Sydney , Australia.