Daisy the Italian Water Dog has spent years honing her sense of smell to sniff out a rare fungus. As the fungi teeters on the edge of extinction, scientists hope Daisy and her nose will help save the species before it's lost.
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00:00 Here at Healesville Sanctuary, Daisy the Italian water dog is the only canine in the world
00:06 who can sniff out fungi for conservation purposes.
00:09 Daisy has spent years developing her sense of smell to detect the tiny and critically
00:13 endangered tea tree finger fungus.
00:16 In the forest next to the sanctuary, Daisy has honed her skills wearing a working jacket
00:20 and GPS collar.
00:22 Her handler Nick Rudder says their close bond makes Daisy more productive.
00:26 It's really helpful that we have that unspoken, non-verbal connection that I can kind of see
00:31 what she's thinking at any given time and she can read me really well.
00:34 We can move through the environment in a really delicate way and we can continue to look for
00:40 this species for a long time even if we're not finding many.
00:44 Although Daisy is the only canine capable of finding the elusive fungus, other dogs
00:48 in her training program can find platypus, frogs and native rats.
00:52 The tea tree finger fungus is only found in six locations in Victoria and is a good barometer
00:57 for how healthy an ecosystem is.
00:59 Before Daisy started finding the fungus, it required painstaking surveying by people who'd
01:04 examine the tree branches.
01:06 An experiment found that Daisy, competing against a human surveyor, could find more
01:10 fungus, could find it faster and was less likely to miss it.
01:13 Now researchers are saying that collaboration between canines and humans yields the best
01:18 results.
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