Diagnosis: Squawk!

 
 You may be wondering why there's a rather large image of pigeons right at the beginning of this blog post, however I assure you its entirely relevant. In fact these apparently stupid 'flying rats' could actually be life saving doctors in disguise. Pigeons actually have an impressive visual memory capacity, from their history as message carrying birds, their extraordinary visual memory has aided humans well and a study has shown that, when trained, pigeons can be as accurate as humans in detecting breast cancer in images. So maybe they are not gonna be the solution to our current doctor shortage but still pretty amazing.

However pigeons are not the only amazing animal mother nature has created. Rats have also found a place in the medical world. Those who have watched ratatouille ( those who haven't should make it a priority) will know that rats have a superior sense of smell. With up to 1,000 olfactory receptors- well over 5x more than humans- rats have the ability to detect and identify a whole multitude of different scents. Whilst they haven't made chefs just yet, African-pouched rats are currently employed in Mozambique in order to detect tuberculosis which is a potentially serious condition that generally affects the lungs resulting in coughs,fever, sometimes even swellings. The rats sniff slides prepared with a human mucus sample and stop to rub their legs when TB is present. These rats can reduce a days work into a mere 10 minutes whilst also being considerably more accurate.

These are just a few of the animal kingdoms many wonders and thank you for taking the time to read the blog.  I hope you enjoyed it, feedback in the comments would be appreciated.

Written by Chris Morgan

Sources: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35542678
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/tuberculosis/Pages/Introduction.aspx

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