The hairy-faced staff at Fenn Bell Zoo are participating in No-Shave November to fundraise support for Medical Detection Dogs! This wonderful charity trains our canine friends to help sniff out life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and COVID-19.

Here's a statement from our chosen charity on how their fluffy fellas will assist us in the ongoing pandemic:

We are confident that dogs could be used as a rapid diagnostic screen to detect COVID-19 infected individuals. COVID-19 Detection Dogs could triage high numbers incredibly quickly a 4 dog team could screen up to 1,000 people per hour to supplement ongoing testing and help prioritise the use of limited resources.

Dogs could be used in public spaces such as airports to identify travellers arriving to the country either without symptoms or who are pre-symptomatic. Our dogs would provide rapid, accurate and non-invasive screening. An early warning system with the potential for rapid isolation. The presence of a trained dog would both indicate individuals who are incubating the disease and those who are may be mildly symptomatic but non-compliant and who require testing.