How Do Bees Identify Land Mines And TNT?

During the Croatian war of independence in the early-Nineties, more than 1.5 million land mines were laid across the country. Although the remaining minefields are marked, de-mining is not yet complete, and over 500 people have been killed and many more injured by land mines since the war ended.

Even once a field has been de-mined and checked, there is a chance that remaining land mines could still be hidden beneath the soil. However, Croatian scientists have developed a rather novel solution to uncovering the remaining mines: bees. These insects have an exceptionally good sense of smell, which means they can be trained to sniff out trinitrotoluene (TNT) – the explosive used in these devices.