Wasp hound

Glen Rains, an engineer with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, has developed a novel sensor that uses live trained wasps to detect a particular scent.

The so-called ‘Wasp Hound’ is a 3-inch PVC pipe about 10 inches long. At one end of the device is a fan and a Web camera. The other end sports a tray containing four or five trained wasps and a removable white cap with a tiny pinhole in it.

In use, the fan sucks air through the pinhole in the cap. And if the scent the wasps have been trained to recognise travels through the hole, they crowd around the pinhole. If the scent is not there, they do not.

Through a USB connection, the Web camera sends an image of the wasps to a computer. There, software analyses the amount of dark space created around the pinhole by the wasps against the white background of the cap.