I don't know about you, but I hate bugs. I can't stand the sight of them and their tiny little eyes, their creepy antennae. I can't even bring myself to kill them in my house. I have to call my husband.
But now, my feelings about bugs may have to change, because they may one day be our first line of defense in the war on terror. That's right, bugs fighting in the war on terror.
I'm working on a story for tonight's show about a Georgia research scientist who figured out a way to train wasps to identify the smell of vanilla and chocolate. The U.S. Department of Defense spotted an opportunity and asked him to train wasps to detect nerve gas and explosives like TNT too. And he's actually done it.
The scientist, Dr. Joe Lewis, trains the wasps by getting them to associate food with the odor they're supposed to detect, almost like giving a dog a treat after he does something well. Wasps have a keen sense of smell and can detect chemicals at very minute levels.
So one day, you may see airport police or the TSA working with a handful of wasps to detect killer substances. What a thought! The training process takes only a few minutes, which is a good thing, because these wasps typically live for just three weeks.
