Data for "Training the domestic ferret to discriminate odors associated with wildlife disease"

Recent avian influenza virus (AIV) infection outbreaks have resulted in global biosecurity and economic concerns. Mallards are asymptomatic for the disease and can potentially spread AI along migratory bird flyways. In a previous study, trained mice correctly discriminated the health status of individual ducks on the basis of fecal odors when feces from post-infection periods were paired with feces from pre-infection periods. Chemical analyses indicated that avian influenza infection was associated with a marked increase of acetoin (3-hydroxy-2-butanone) in feces. In this 2015 study, domesticated male ferrets (Mustela putorius furo) were trained to display a specific conditioned response (i.e. active scratch alert) in response to a marked increase of acetoin in a presentation of an acetoin:1-octen-3-ol solution. Ferrets rapidly generalized this learned response to the odor of irradiated feces from avian influenza infected mallards. The data included in this publication covers the training with acetoin/octenol ratios, testing with acetoin/octenol ratios, and generalization testing with irradiated fecal samples from ducks pre- and post-infection.
We hypothesized that the success of the mice in detecting AIV in mallard fecal samples could be repeated in a species that had a more malleable behavioral repertoire (i.e., a proposed canine AI biosensor program).
These data were published 04/01/2021. Minor metadata updates were made on 05/18/2023. For more information about these data, see Golden et al. (2021, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259415).