OREANDA-NEWS. Scientists from the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands managed to teach bees to detect coronavirus in patient tests. According to «Geo» magazine, the researchers first found, that bees can recognize COVID-19 due to one of the functions of the nervous system, and conducted a number of experiments.

Training the bees, the scientists gave them water with sugar as a reward after a sample with COVID-19, and nothing after a sample without COVID-19. As a result, after the coronavirus test, the bees began to stretch their proboscis in anticipation of a reward. Thus, with the help of bees, the result of a test for COVID-19 can be determined much faster than with a PCR test, the researchers note. In the Netherlands, more than 1.5 million people have fallen ill with the coronavirus. For 17 thousand citizens, the disease was fatal.

Earlier it was reported, that scientists from France and Lebanon have taught dogs to determine the coronavirus. 177 patients from five hospitals agreed to participate in the experiment, about half — with COVID-19. The scientists collected samples of their sweat from their armpits and used them to train the dogs. For 1-3 weeks, the dogs were trained to distinguish the sweat samples of infected people from those of uninfected people. Then the scientists tested their abilities: in front of the dogs there were several samples, among which they had to find one that belonged to a person with COVID-19.

The dogs memorized the smell in less than a day, and within a few weeks learned to distinguish the sweat samples of COVID-19 patients from the sweat samples of uninfected people.