Explosive- and drug-sniffing dog performance is affected by their handlers’ beliefs

Drug- and explosives-sniffing dog/handler teams’ performance is affected by human handlers’ beliefs, possibly in response to subtle, unintentional handler cues, a study by researchers at UC Davis has found. The study, published in the January issue of the journal Animal Cognition,found that detection-dog/handler teams erroneously “alerted,” or identified a scent, when there was no scent present more than 200 times — particularly when the handler believed that there was scent present. More . . .