Trained Dog Can Detect Colon Cancer by Sniffing Poop

A dog owned by Japanese medical researchers has a remarkable gift for detecting colon cancer victims by sniffing their excrement. The black Labrador Retriever has a 95% accuracy rate:

In the study, the retriever performed as well as a colonoscopy, a technique in which a fibre-optic tube with a camera on the end is inserted into the rectum to look for suspect areas of the intestine.

It correctly spotted which samples were cancerous and which were not in 33 out of 36 breath tests, equal to 95 per cent accuracy, and in 37 out of 38 stool tests (98 per cent accuracy).

Link via Popular Science | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user DrStarbuck used under Creative Commons license