BALTIMORE — Some police dogs may smell fear, and that could be bad news for finding missing people whose genetic makeup leaves them more prone to stress.
Trained police dogs couldn’t recognize stressed-out people with a particular version of a gene that’s involved in stress management, geneticist Francesco Sessa reported February 22 at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. The dogs had no trouble identifying the men and women volunteers when the people weren’t under stress. The study may help explain why dogs can perform flawlessly in training, but have difficulty tracking people in real-world situations.