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Does the tail show when the nose knows? Artificial intelligence outperforms human experts at predicting detection dogs finding their target through tail kinematics

George Martvel,Giulia Pedretti,T. Lazebnik,Anna Zamansky,Yuri Ouchi,Tiago Monteiro,Nareed Farhat,I. Shimshoni,Yuval Michaeli,Paola Valsecchi,Nathaniel J. Hall,Sarah Marshall-Pescini,Dan Grinstein

Published 2025 in Royal Society Open Science

ABSTRACT

Detection dogs are utilized for searching and alerting to various substances due to their olfactory abilities. Dog trainers report being able to ‘predict’ such identification based on subtle behavioural changes, such as tail movement. This study investigated tail kinematic patterns of dogs during a detection task, using computer vision to detect tail movement. Eight dogs searched for a target odour on a search wall, alerting to its presence by standing still. Dogs’ detection accuracy against a distractor odour was 100% with trained concentration, while during threshold assessment, it progressively reached 50%. In the target odour area, dogs exhibited a higher left-sided tail-wagging amplitude. An artificial intelligence (AI) model showed a 77% accuracy score in the classification, and, in line with the dogs’ performance, progressively decreased at lower odour concentrations. Additionally, we compared the performance of an AI classification model to that of 190 detection dog handlers in determining when a dog was in the vicinity of a target odour. The AI model outperformed dog professionals, correctly classifying 66% against 46% of videos. These findings indicate the potential of AI-enhanced techniques to reveal new insights into dogs’ behavioural repertoire during odour discrimination.

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