Mice to sniff out drug dealers

In the cat-and-mouse game that is the illicit drug trade, Israel Police are betting on the mouse. Law enforcement officers are tapping the rodent’s powerful sense of smell — it’s even more acute than that of dogs — in their battle against illegal narcotics.

Police have approached Bio Explorers, a Herzliya-based company developing an airport security scanner that uses mice to detect explosives and drugs, for help in taking down drug traffickers on the streets, the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Tuesday. In the airport scanner, air samples from passengers are piped to the hidden mice, which are trained to run into an alarmed chamber when they detect certain substances.

A police source said the mice will be used in the field as a replacement for dogs. Whether or not they will be leashed, collared, and given names was not reported.

The pilot project is scheduled to last for five months, after which its success will be reviewed and a decision made on whether to implement a wider issue of drug detection mice.