Friday, November 02, 2007

Canine Forensics?

By Geophile

Found this today and thought I'd post it. I'm not sure how these dogs were supposed to detect burials if they were centuries old. I hope that not many people who are contemplating disassembling their rock mounds will see this and think it's valid. I'm not sure what state this site was in but it looks western.

And of course, the fact that they're not burials, which they very well may not be, doesn't mean they're not worth preserving. But that's probably even harder to make people understand.

4 comments :

Larry Harrop said...

As pointed out in these articles,it seems like trained dogs can detect burials even thousands of years old.

http://k9forensic.org/historical.html

I find it hard to believe that decomposed human scent would remain in the soil after hundreds of years.
It looks like it would be a simple solution to an old problem.

pwax said...

Neat! If it is true, there is no reason to assume it is the original human scent - after 100 years it could change but still be detectable by dogs. For example I read that a body leaves behind a higher level of potassium in the soil. Maybe they can smell that?

pwax said...

How did you find that Geophile? It is excellent.

Geophile said...

Doing a routine google of "stone mounds", I think. You've probably experienced how stuff comes and goes on the same google searches over time. This just showed up.

Hard to believe about the dogs, but I'll suspend my disbelief for now.