Special dog treats could be in store for one animal after it helped researchers to sniff out cancer.
While it is well known that dogs have an acute sense of smell, one Labrador has shown researchers that she can even pick out the smell of cancer.
A study conducted at Kyushu University in Japan and published in the journal Gut found that the eight-year-old black Labrador could pick out cancer samples from their smell.
With breath tests, the animal found the cancer 33 out of 36 times, while with stool samples, 37 out of 38 cancers were detected.
While the researchers acknowledge that using dogs in clinics may not be practical, they do hope the discovery could help with the development of new screening techniques.
Hideto Sonoda, who worked on the study, noted that the ability of dogs to detect scents does vary from animal to animal and even in the same creature on different days.
According to the BBC, some early research has now been conducted on developing an electronic dog's nose.