By: Lucas Ku

You might be wondering: “How is this possible? Worms can’t sniff out cancer.” The truth about it is that they can. Scientists have been researching worms and have done experiments on them to see if they actually can sniff out cancer. When they tested this theory, scientists saw that worms could actually sniff out cancer—and fight it, too. Worms can’t see or hear, but they have a good sense of smell like dogs. Scientists put hungry worms in a tube because lung cancer seems to smell yummy to the worms, so when they go near it, the people will know that there is cancer there. They know that they can sniff out diseases if they go to a certain end. Researchers found out that 70% out of 50 worms could sniff out diseases. They know that they smelt it because whenever the worm gets to it, something will activate and you can see the glow in the dark scales in the worm. It’s impressive that they can smell the disease because they only have 302 brain cells, while our brain alone has 86 billion cells and we can’t even sniff out cancer. No one can read the worm’s mind, so it’s impossible to say for sure why these tiny critters find cancer cells appealing, but that might be the same reason why they like rotten apples so much.