Ant Man to the rescue!

Did you know that cancer has a smell? Well, it's not a smell we can detect ourselves. But scientists have discovered that some animals can - and that's becoming a way to find out if someone has cancer before they even feel unwell.

Can you think what animals have been helping? Well, it's maybe not a surprise that dogs, those four-legged friends with their famously sensitive noses, are being trained to sniff out cancer.

They don't come up and sniff people. They learn to smell cancer on samples of people's sweat, or their pee. But it takes many months and lots of money to train a dog.

That set Baptiste Piqueret thinking. He's a young scientist in Paris, who studies animals' behaviour. And he knew of another creature which uses smell to sniff out its food - the humble ant. Baptiste found that he could train an ant to sniff out cancer in just about an hour. That's a lot quicker than a dog - and an ant doesn't eat so much!

Hear from Baptiste about his discovery, how he gives his ants rewards of drops of sugary water, and how his colleagues now call him "The Ant Trainer". The story is in the WoW! News app.

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