Sniffer ants: screening for cancer – Le Journal du week-end

The experiment had already been conclusive with dogs, able to identify the presence of cancer cells just by smell. But Baptiste Piqueret, experimental and comparative ethology laboratory at the Sorbonne University in Paris, bets on a completely different animal also endowed with an unparalleled sense of smell, the ant. He raises thousands of them in his laboratory and is interested in one species in particular. “It is a species called formica fusca. It is a species that is present throughout the northern hemisphere. This genus of ants has been described as having the most important cognitive abilities among ants”, learns the scientist. In front of our cameras, the researcher will teach the ants the smell of cancer patient cells. It will bait the ant with what it adores, sugar. And once released in the arena, “and after a while, she will come across the reward by chance. And underneath, we have the smell we want her to learn. And she will very quickly associate this smell to the reward,” he explains. By renewing the experience two to three times, it is no longer a coincidence. The ant recognizes the smell directly, even without the presence of sugars. But we must continue the research. And in a few years, the ant could well become a means of early detection before having an MRI or a mammogram. The other advantage of the ant is that it learns very quickly. It takes him less than an hour to recognize a smell, compared to several months for dogs. TF1 | Report C.Bayle, J. Clouzeau, E. Duboscq