Elephants Might Smell Cancer

Other types of animals have already shown an amazing sense of smell.

An animal trainer in South Africa is investigating whether elephants can use their impressive sense of smell to help mankind. Sean Hensman believes the giant animals might be able to detect TNT, which is often used in land mines. Moreover, elephants could be trained to identify some human illnesses, such as cancer.

An elephant’s trunk contains thousands of muscles, which makes it extremely versatile. The trunk is used for breathing, smelling, touching, grasping and making sounds. An elephant’s sense of smell is about 28,000 times better than that of humans.

The purpose of these studies is to convince local residents of the value of elephants and to lead people there to be more protective of the animals. “If local communities who have these animals in their backyard see a value to them, then hopefully they will want them around for future generations as opposed to just destroying them because they’re eating their crops,” Hensman says..

Other animals have also demonstrated a keen sense of smell. A dog named Daisy has been trained to identify the smell of cancer. Daisy is one of the world’s first bio-detection dogs, These canines may one day revolutionize medical diagnosis. Their sense of smell is even better than an elephant’s -- 100,000 times greater than ours. Of course, the smelling ability of dogs has long been put to good use. The Army has used dogs to sniff out bombs, police have used dogs to find illegal drugs, and recently a woman in the UK discovered she had cancer before her doctors knew about it — her dog had sniffed it out.

Then there is that amazing story of Oscar the cat, who has had a book written about him titled Making Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat. Oscar is a therapy cat living in a nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island. According to David Dosa, a geriatrician and author of the book, Oscar apparently has the ability to detect when a resident is about to die. When the cat goes into a resident’s room, the person will typically die within two hours (but not because of Oscar). 

Like Dr. Dosa, Dr. Joan Teno, a professor of community health, thinks the cat might be picking up on specific odors surrounding death.  Dr. Teno says, “I think there are certain chemicals released when someone is dying, and he is smelling and sensing those.”

We humans may be jealous that these mere animals have such amazing senses of smell. After all, according to secular science, we are supposedly the most evolved “animal,” so why do we fall so far short on the smell chart? Actually, it seems more logical that a Creator has given each type of animal the gifts it needs to survive. Although humans don’t have the smelling ability of a dog or the seeing ability of an eagle or the strength of an elephant, we have been given a gift no animal seems to have, at least to the same degree — the ability to reason.

God had something important to say about our reasoning ability. According to Isaiah 1:18 (King James version): “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” After acknowledging that the creatures here on earth with all their wonderful abilities could not possibly be the result of unguided natural processes, we begin to reason that we ought to pay closer attention to what our Creator God is saying. He has told us that our bloody souls are washed clean by the suffering and death of Jesus Christ when we come to faith in Him as our Savior. That puts us on the road to salvation. Can you smell heaven’s wonderful aromas from here?

Reference: “Can Elephants Smell Cancer?”, ABC News / Yahoo News
  
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QUESTION OF THE DAY

What piece of equipment in hospitals or doctors’ offices is often not properly sanitized?

The stethoscope. A Mayo Clinic study showed medical personnel may sanitize their hands but often place the stethoscope back into their pockets without properly cleaning the instrument.

Source: USA Weekend (March 28-30, 2014)

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