Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly. Photo courtesy of André Karwath.
How the fruit fly could help us sniff out drugs and bombs. A fly's sense of smell could be used in new technology to detect drugs and bombs, new University of Sussex research has found. Brain scientist Professor Thomas Nowotny was surprised to find that the 'nose' of fruit flies can identify odours from illicit drugs and explosive substances almost as accurately as wine odour, which the insects are naturally attracted to because it smells like their favourite food, fermenting fruit. Published today (15 October 2014) in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics , the study brings scientists closer to developing electronic noses (e-noses) that closely replicate the sensitive olfactory sense of animals. The hope is that such e-noses will be much more sensitive and much faster than the currently commercially available e-noses that are typically based on metal-oxide sensors and are very slow, compared to a biological nose. Professor Nowotny, Professor of Informatics at the University of Sussex, led the study alongside researchers from Monash University and CSIRO in Australia. He said: "Dogs can smell drugs and people have trained bees to detect explosives.
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