October 24, 2014 - Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1uxdbVf. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Hult Prize finalist Bee Healthy is looking to revolutionize medical diagnostics by training bees to smell chemical indicators of disease. Founder Tobias Hortsmann explains that “Every disease leaves a unique “footprint” of chemical biomarkers on a persons breath.” He adds, “Bees are 10,000 times more sensitive to chemicals in the air than humans.” He notes that, “Bees can be trained to react to certain biomarkers that are indicative for a disease. They would stick out their tongue when they identify a certain biomarker on a persons breath.” More remarkable, perhaps, than that bees’ sense of smell is that, according to Tobias, "Training a bee takes around 10 minutes and works like the typical classical conditioning (pavlovian conditioning)."
#139: Hult Prize Finalist Trains Bees To Diagnose Disease (Really!)