Researchers have developed a surprising new Covid-19 test: A team at Wageningen University in the Netherlands has trained bees to stick out their tongues when they detect the scent of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. (Bees have an acute sense of smell and can pick up on many scents humans can’t.) Each time the bees were exposed to a swab of the virus, they received a sugar-water solution, which they stuck their tongues out to collect. After repeating the process many times, the bees began to associate the virus with the sugary reward. Eventually, even when no reward was offered, they would stick their tongues out when the smell was present, confirming a positive coronavirus result.
While regular Covid tests can take hours or days to get a result, the bees are able to provide answers within seconds. The scientists hope to employ this model in countries where access to testing is limited. “If this is going to work, it can be very fast and very cheap,” Wim van der Poel, a leading professor in the research, told the Washington Post. “And that would be very convenient.”