Diabetic alert dogs

It’s one thing to be “man’s best friend,” but some dogs are veritable lifesavers. Certain special service dogs known as diabetic alert dogs are trained to attend to diabetics by identifying and reporting on dangerous changes in blood sugar levels.

These extraordinary canines detect a person’s blood sugar level via the scent of their breath and sweat. How exactly they do this scientists still don’t know for sure. However, research at the University of Cambridge has shown that a volatile, scentless-to-humans chemical called isoprene is present at higher levels in the breath when a person’s blood sugar drops. Researchers suspect that dogs, whose sense of smell is about 60 times greater than ours, can detect the scent of this chemical.

When a diabetic alert dog detects a drop in their human companion’s blood sugar level, they alert them by barking, activating an alarm or tapping them with their muzzle.