UA Student, Professor Study Effectiveness of Dogs Used to Find the Dead

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Although not exactly a typical class project, a University of Alabama student and professor recently studied the reliability of dogs trained to sniff out dead bodies.

Alanna Lasseter, a Mobile native and senior at UA, and Dr. Keith Jacobi, an assistant professor of anthropology, conducted a series of trials to gauge whether more uniform training methods for the dogs and their handlers could improve their reliability.

“There are no training standards for cadaver dogs,” Jacobi said. “We are trying to establish whether or not there is a need for training standards. A lot of the dogs’ handlers are civilians – good Samaritans – who want to help out, but who do not have access to training facilities.”

While pointing out the initial research was preliminary, Jacobi said there are indications that revised training methods could offer improvements in some areas.

“There are signals the dogs are giving that the handlers are not picking up,” Jacobi said. “That’s the interesting discovery to me. The dog is trying to tell them, hey, there is something here.” In some cases, the handlers ignored the dogs’ signals because the dog did not respond in the exact manner the handler expected, Jacobi said.

“Some dogs are picking up on skeletonized remains that are two feet deep,” Jacobi said. “We’re talking about locating one human vertebrae in a forest about 100 by 75 yards. That’s a huge area, and that’s amazing.” The initial research also indicated allowing dogs to rest in an air-conditioned setting prior to a trial improved the results. A panting dog is a dog that is not sniffing, Jacobi said.

Before bringing the first of the cadaver dogs to Tuscaloosa for the experiments, Lasseter, who has a dual major of anthropology and psychology, reviewed existing research on cadaver dogs. And while such dogs have been routinely used by law enforcement agencies in investigations, Lasseter found a void of information.

“There hasn’t been much research done on cadaver dogs and their handlers, especially academically,” Lasseter said. She and Jacobi are helping change that.

Jacobi and Lasseter have developed a videotape archive of the trials. With additional funding, they hope to add to the archive and develop cadaver dog training videos for law enforcement agencies. Based on their initial results, the pair wrote and submitted a grant request, seeking funding from the Department of Justice for additional research.

“We’re also trying to answer, what is the reliability of a cadaver dog and handler,” Lasseter said. “The current literature supports that a cadaver dog is most reliable when it’s trained just to do cadaver work.” Little research has been completed on buried remains, especially skeletal remains.

As curator of human osteology with UA’s Alabama Museum of Natural History, Jacobi oversees a collection of bones, many of which are part of active, on-going law enforcement investigations. He serves as a resource for the state’s forensic laboratories, assisting them in identifying remains in homicide and other death investigations.

In this role, Jacobi had seen cadaver dogs and their handlers work and had wondered how they were trained and how reliable they were. With assistance from Ricky Farley, of the Alabama Canine Law Enforcement Officers Training Center in Tuscaloosa, five trials were used in testing the dogs. The trials were set up to gauge the dogs’ abilities to distinguish between human remains and those of animals, their ability to discover buried remains at different depths, and their ability to distinguish between old and fresh human scent.

One handler participating was Tracy Sargent. She serves, along with her dog Brooke, as a reserve deputy, for the Haralson County, Ga., sheriff’s department. She also volunteers Brooke’s trailing, air-scent and cadaver training services through another organization. “What they learn from this research is going to help them, but it’s also going to help us as dog handlers,” Sargent said. “We will be able to help so many others.”

Lasseter was selected as one of UA’s McNair Scholars and received funding for the research through the U.S. Department of Education’s TRIO program, known as the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program. Named in honor of McNair, who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986, the federal program encourages students from underrepresented backgrounds to enter graduate studies leading to a doctorate degree. McNair Scholars receive $2,800 to conduct research with faculty mentors.