US trains dog to sniff out child porn

Connecticut State Police have a new weapon in the war on child porn - a golden Labrador which has been trained to track computer hardware.

The dog, named Thoreau, went through a special 22 week programme in which it was taught to sniff out thumb drives, hard drives and other gadgets according to the Providence Journal.

According to the report child pornographers have been known to hide their hard-drives in in ceiling tiles or even radios, but try as they might Thoreau's nose knows.

“If it has a memory card, he’ll sniff it out,” Detective Adam Houston, Thoreau’s handler, said before demonstrating his abilities to reporters.

Thoreau sniffed through a desk, finding a hard drive in a ziplocked bag in the upper shelf of the desk, along with a flash drive and thumb drive.

In exchange the dog got food, apparently “This is how he eats every day,” Houston said.