Is doggie disease detection a question of… attitude?!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Meet the medical detection dog! These pups sniff out disease. But are some dogs better suited for the job?
Enter Sharyn Bistre Dabbah and team from the University of Bristol. They put nearly 60 dogs through a “glass half-full” test. Optimist pups raced toward mystery treat bowls. Pessimists hung back, expecting disappointment. Then onto the real job – sniffing samples for signs of disease!
Optimists were easier to train. However, the more hesitant dogs barked less at wrong samples, reducing false alarms.
So, mindset matters! Just like people, some dogs dive in, while others take a … paws.
Get it? Paws?
Reference: Bistre Dabbah, S., Mendl, M., Guest, C., & Rooney, N.J. (2025). An exploratory study of associations between judgement bias, demographic and behavioural characteristics, and detection task performance in medical detection dogs. PLOS ONE, 20(4), e0320158. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320158