Tobias can be nosey—literally. Be they mollusks or insects, this highly trained expert can sniff out pests.
Tobias is a yellow Labrador Retriever. He works on Santa Cruz Island off the Southern California coast. Snout to the ground, Tobias snuffles more than 1.6 square miles of underbrush, searching for nests of invasive Argentine ants.
Scientists have tried for years to rid the Channel Islands of the nasty insect. But they’re unsure whether their efforts have succeeded.
Argentine ants are tiny. But they’re one of the world’s worst animal invaders. Native to South America, Argentine ants can cross oceans and borders—bothering homeowners and farmers wherever they roam. They’ve shown up in Australia, Europe, Japan, the United States, and elsewhere. They hitch rides on ships and in luggage. When Argentine ants invade an area, native ants often leave. That can harm plants and animals.
Santa Cruz Island is part of Channel Islands National Park. In that protected environment, Argentine ants compete with local ants for nectar. The pests can keep bees from pollinating flowers—stopping seed production and killing plants.
Seven years ago, teams began using helicopters to distribute low doses of pesticide mixed with sugar water. Worker ants gobbled up the bait and headed back to their nests. There, they poisoned ant queens. Without queens, the colonies eventually died off. Or so scientists hope.
Christina Boser is an ecologist. She says Tobias hasn’t discovered any new ant colonies since he started sniffing on Santa Cruz. That could mean the pesticide project worked. To keep Tobias going while the team tries to decide for sure, researchers preserved several old nests. They want Tobias to be able to “find” ants so he can get his work reward: a favorite ball.
The fact that Tobias isn’t unearthing Argentine ants is good news. But scientists will need long-term data before they’re sure the ants are gone for good.
When the stint on Santa Cruz Island ends, Tobias will be dispatched for the same ant-sniffing job on San Clemente, another island in the Channel Islands chain.
Tobias is an old hand at using his nose. Before the ant gig, he sniffed out invasive quagga mussels at a lake in Montana. Boser says Tobias is “good at his job.” She adds, “We’re happy to keep him working, and he’s happy to do it.”
