The dogs are members of “EcoDogs,” a three-year-old
collaboration at Alabama’s Auburn University between the science
departments and the school’s Canine Detection Research
Institute, which trains dogs to detect explosives.
Environmentalists fear the non-native pythons are upsetting the
ecological balance of South Florida. Their spread is generally
attributed to irresponsible pet owners dumping their snakes and
1992′s Hurricane Andrew, which destroyed an adjacent exotic
snake warehouse. Now they’ve adapted to the Everglades, and park
officials say there’s no way of eradicating them. Instead, with
help from dogs, they hope to keep them from further spreading.
In a trial run, the dogs showed they can cover a search area 2.5
times faster than a person. “People can only see that the snake
is there if they can see the snake. The dogs can smell the snake
even if it’s not visually apparent to us,” said Christina
Romagosa, a biologist at Auburn. Two black Labrador retrievers
from EcoDogs, Ivy and Jake, were sent to th