Dogs are being sent to Turkey and Syria after the earthquake. How will they help?

As many as two dozen countries have sent search teams to Turkey and Syria hit by the deadliest earthquake in the world in over a decade. Some countries have also dispatched search-and-rescue dogs to aid in locating missing people caught under the rubble. The 7.8 magnitude quake on Monday (6 February), followed by a series of tremors, has killed more than 11,000 people. With thousands of tumbled buildings, the number of those still trapped remains uncertain. Which countries have sent search-and-rescue dogs to Turkey and Syria? How are canines helpful in rescue operations? We explain. Countries sending dogs India has sent two teams of Natural Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel to Turkey, accompanied by a specially trained dog squad. The four-member dog squad comprises Labradors who are trained in sniffing and rescue work, ANI reported.

NDRF Urban Search & Rescue medium team along with Rescue dogs and other necessary equipment lands at Adana Türkiye 🇹🇷 for #USAR #HADR Ops. #SavingLivesAndBeyond 🇮🇳@PMOIndia @HMOIndia @BhallaAjay26 @AtulKarwal @PIBHomeAffairs
@IndianEmbassyTR pic.twitter.com/yGtkTV3rl0

— NDRF India I राष्ट्रीय आपदा मोचन बल 🇮🇳 (@NDRFHQ) February 7, 2023

The Ministry of External Affairs said that India will also send medical teams with trained doctors, paramedics and essential medicines to Turkey. Moreover, a third team with 51 rescuers and a dog squad will fly to Turkey tonight from Delhi. The United States is sending around 100 Los Angeles County firefighters and structural engineers, along with six specially trained dogs to Turkey, reported Associated Press (AP). A team of 21 rescuers, two rescue dogs, a special rescue vehicle, a structural engineer, five doctors and seismic planning experts will reach Turkey from neighbouring Greece.

Mexico is also sending 16 search-and-rescue dogs to Turkey.

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One of the rival governments in Libya, led by Prime Minister Abdel Hamid Dbeibah, has promised to send a 55-member team, consisting of rescuers, medical members and four dogs, to Turkey to help carry out rescue operations, AP reported. A team from the group International Search and Rescue Germany, consisting of 42 experts and seven dogs, is heading to Turkey’s Kirikhan, near the Syrian border. Swiss rescue dog service REDOG will dispatch 80 search and rescue specialists, 22 rescuers and 14 dogs to Turkey, as per AP. The United Kingdom, Taiwan and the Czech Republic are also sending search dogs to Turkey. ALSO READ: Turkey, Syria earthquake: How Big Tech is coming to the rescue How search dogs are useful during disasters Dogs can be trained to seek trapped survivors or bodies in disasters. The dogs bark if they find someone to alert the rescue team. However, training dogs for such operations is a “lengthy, difficult, and costly process”, as per a National Geographic report. A dog and its handler take nearly one and a half to two years to become “mission ready”, the report added. [caption id=“attachment_12125682” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Many countries are sending dogs for rescue operations to Turkey. AP[/caption] These canines are usually sporting dogs, such as Labradors or German shepherds. “Toy-obsessed canines make the best search-and-rescue dogs because a toy serves as the reward when the dogs find a person”, Dr Deb Zoran, a veterinarian at Texas A&M University, told NBC News in 2013. She said that training these dogs is like “training a fighter pilot”, meaning that they have to be “high-energy, highly motivated, but very trainable”. On how these dogs track people in disasters, National Geographic explained that the animals rely on human scents. Like traditional “tracking” dogs, these rescue dogs follow the direction the missing person has taken. Researchers found that canines can “tell which nostril is pulling in the scent” via their olfactory sensors, so they know which path to follow when tracking, Science had reported in 2009. As per NBC News, the dogs deployed to disaster sites are air-scenting dogs as they track scent carried via air, instead of sniffing objects. “The dogs are so valuable to rescue efforts because they can go into places people can’t”, Zoran explained.

According to National Geographic, these dogs are trained to see the search operations as a game that comes with rewards if successful.

“In human detection, we sometimes train them on as little as one tooth,” trainer and handler Bev Peabody told National Geographic in 2021. Peabody recalled that the Mexico City earthquake in 2017 threw rescue dogs into the limelight. A yellow Labrador Retriever named Frida won hearts worldwide when she saved 12 lives and found 40 bodies in operations across Mexico, Haiti, Guatemala and Ecuador that year, BBC reported. Peabody told National Geographic that during Mexico City earthquake “the dogs alerted on a collapsed parking tower, and when they got the victims out it was a grandfather and a grandson in a VW bug—alive”. NBC News noted that these canines are “motivated by the love of their work”. When they are at rest, they are “turned off”, Zoran said. “But when you bring them out, you can just see it — they are so ready,” she said, as per NBC News. “This is the greatest job ever, and they get the best reward ever.” With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.