This dog can sniff out cancer!

A dog in Japan has been trained to sniff out cancer. The Japan Times is reporting about a 9 year old labrador retriever who has been successfully trained to find cancer.

The dog named Marine was given 300 samples to smell.  In one test, she was given five containers containing breath samples of a patient with colon cancer.  She chose the correct sample 33 out of 36 times.  In smelling fecal samples, she found the sample from people with cancer 37 out of 38 times.

Researchers hope that they can determine what causes cancers to produce a unique smell.  This will hopefully aid in early cancer detection in the future.