Ants can smell the 'smell' of cancer in humans

French scientists have found that ants have the ability to sniff out cancer cells in the human body and could be used to diagnose cancer in the future.

A team of experts at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) has discovered that the ant Formica fusca has a very developed sense of smell.

It can differentiate cancer cells from healthy human cells. However, the team says they need to conduct more clinical trials before the insect can be used in hospital diagnostics.

Ants can distinguish between cancer cells and healthy cells.

They express confidence that in the future, ants have the potential to better locate cancer cells in humans than dogs.

To conduct the study, the scientists exposed 36 Formica fusca ants to the cells in a laboratory setting.

First, they exposed the ants to the smell of a sample of human cancer cells and as a reward a bit of a sugar solution.

In the second step, the researchers exposed the ants to two different odors, a completely new odor and the second, the smell of cancer cells.

After the experiment was successful, the researchers exposed the ants to different cancer cells. As a result, they found that ants were able to distinguish between cancer cells and healthy cells, as well as between two distinct types of cancer.

After training, the Formica fusca ants detected volatile organic compounds released by cancer cells.

In a recent announcement, CNRS said that before it can be used on a large scale, they need to re-evaluate the effectiveness of this method by clinical trials on humans.

However, initial results show that ants have the ability to learn to distinguish odors very quickly, with high potential to become a low-cost but highly effective and less invasive cancer diagnosis option.

This is not the first time scientists have used animals' sense of smell to locate cancer cells.

Experts explain that a dog's nose can diagnose cancer with high accuracy. However, training them takes from a few months to a year.

On the other hand, they can easily raise insects like ants under controlled and inexpensive conditions. Ants have a uniformly developed olfactory system among hundreds of individuals.

In the future, they could train ants to do complex sniffing tasks like finding drugs, explosives, spoiled food or other diseases like malaria, infections and diabetes.