A UK police department recently brought on a semen-sniffing dog, reports the BBC.
The Cheshire and North Wales Police Dog Unit recently welcomed April, a beautiful golden Labrador Retriever, to help with sexual assault cases. Fascinatingly, April can detect immensely small amounts of seminal fluid. Her superior sense of smell allows her to detect as little as 0.016 ml (0.0005 fl.oz.) of seminal fluid. April finished six weeks of specialized training with PC Joseph Gunn.
Amazingly, the UK currently has three semen-sniffing search dogs, with April being one of them.
A Semen-Sniffing Dog Is a New Idea
In 2014, the Derbyshire Police Dept. brought on Billie, an adorable Cocker Spaniel also trained to find semen. At the time, Billie was the only dog in the country with this incredible skill. Billie has since retired—and lives a calm, happy life in his new forever home— but his work laid the foundation for training other dogs.
Since then, the Derbyshire police’s novel forensic search dog project has trained dogs to detect a variety of body fluids; among their graduates is 15-month-old April.
And not a moment too soon. Only 36 hours after finishing her training, a scene in Cheshire required April’s unique skills. Along with PC Gunn, the pair arrived on the scene to help with the investigation. With April, the police hope to successfully solve more sexual offense investigations, and arrest the perpetrators.
According to Lead Trainer PC Dean Allen, “The dogs can indicate the presence of seminal fluid in places traditional kits can’t detect it. Once they’ve identified the scent, that piece of material or vegetation can be sent away and the extracted DNA profiled, leading to more prosecutions.” Going on, he added, “The result is we can catch sexual offenders that we may not have been able to otherwise.”
