Dogs are lame, so it’s no surprise they can’t even perform simple tasks like sniffing out cancer like that article on Facebook says they can. Bees on the other hand are cool, and can probably do that.
The research done to ‘prove’ that stupid dogs can smell cancer has been inconclusive at best, with issues in design. The training and experimental procedure was performed on patients already receiving treatment—an obvious flaw: the medicines themselves smell.
Bees can sense molecules in the parts per trillion (pathetic humans are in the parts per billion). The famous biologist Karl von Frisch, and even that great dog lover Pavlov, proved that honeybees communicate complex spatial ideas and indicate time and numbers, and can also learn simple instruction, like in classical conditioning.
The reason a bee does this better than a dog is their simplicity, and detached and indifferent nature. Stupid dogs are confused by the added weakness of wanting to please their trainer, and to provide a positive response. This is why sniffer dogs for drugs and other contraband often turn up false positives or miss perpetrators. Bees are heartless, and don’t give a damn what you think, and just do what they want. They’re also cheaper, quicker to train, don’t need a dedicated handler, and can’t be distracted—so we should stop experimenting with dirty dogs like they are in the US, and start using clinical bees.
Bees can also see colours and smell scents you can’t imagine. One of which is cancer. It’s a known fact that blood composition is altered by many illnesses, and it is not a large stretch to imagine some of these molecules are volatile, and thus lost in the breath. In fact, it has been demonstrated that bees can sense them, and identify patients with diabetes and tuberculosis.
Bees can be easily conditioned to associate a scent, such as cancer markers, illicit drugs or explosives with a food reward, and indicate their presence by moving to a special chamber in a test container, or by sticking out their tiny bee tongues.
Bees are super useful. They provide you with sweet, sweet honey, their venom provides molecules being investigated to treat multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia and other inflammatory diseases, they pollinate an enormous amount of our crops, and they are the most badass animals ever, since they literally die if they attack you, which is pretty hardcore. All dogs do is slobber on you. They are bleeding hearts, and inferior to insects. They don’t even have wings.
Also never forget that wasps can also be (bee?) trained, so always stay on the good side of entomologists, or you could find yourself in a Hitchcock film. Finally, in case you needed any more proof bees are way sicker than dogs any day: BEES VOTE ABOUT WHERE TO PUT THEIR HIVES
