Can lab rats be trained to detect explosives? That's the premise behind experiments being conducted at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn: "Roborats may someday be the terrorist's worst nightmare —keen, furtive little spies that can be guided into a building through, say, an air duct and then allowed to roam freely to sniff out explosives, toxic chemicals, or other bad stuff."

The U.S. Defense Department is already interested in the experiments, and is encouraging researchers to find other "nosy little creatures for the perilous job, including rats, wasps, honeybees, and even yeast (yes, yeast)."