Police in the US state of Utah have recruited a 17-month-old dog specially trained to sniff out electronic storage devices containing images of child porn hidden by paedophiles.
The electronics-sniffing dog called URL, but pronounced as 'Earl' is uniquely skilled and can find hidden memory cards and USB sticks paedophiles often use to store their images.
A black Labrador who was rescued from a shelter as a puppy, URL, known affectionately as 'porn dog', can distinguish between an iPad and a USB drive and ignores remote controls and alarm clocks as they smell different.
"Specially trained to sniff out electronic storage devices such as thumb drives, cellphones, SIM cards, SD cards, external hard drives, tablets and iPads, URL offers a unique set of skills to aid investigators in fighting crime," said Weber County Sheriff's Office in Utah, a law enforcement organisation.
"Whether it's child porn, terrorism intelligence, narcotics or financial crimes information, URL has the ability to find evidence hidden on basically any electronic memory device," the office was quoted as saying by 'The Washington Post'.
The training for electronics-sniffing dogs takes six to eight weeks - longer than the training process for drug-sniffing dogs.
It is a trade secret exactly which chemical URL is sensing, though it is possibly an adhesive commonly used to manufacture USB drives and microSD cards, the report said.
"I think everyone was pretty skeptical. Really? A dog that can detect electronics? He certainly has some unique abilities, and we're excited to have him," said Lieutenant Lane Findlay of the Weber County Sherrif's Office.
Dogs are about 10,000 to 100,000 times more sensitive to odour than humans. Where humans might smell a soup, a dog could pick out the scent of chicken and the noodle wheat and the individual seasonings.
"We're starting to push the dog into situations we never thought possible before. I think we limit our dogs to our own capabilities. And I'm no Einstein or Hawking," Steve Austin, who has spent 30 years training detection dogs for police, environmental agencies among others, told the paper.
