The authors, conservation biologists from the Helmholz Center for Environmental Research in Germany, gathered data on more than 2,400 cases in which dogs were used to help detect and monitor wildlife.

They have been deployed on nearly every continent and have detected animals, plants, insects and even fungi and bacteria. Labrador retrievers, pointers, border collies, and German shepherds were the most common, but the use of different breeds varied.

More than 88 percent of the cases that compared dogs to other methods of wildlife detection noted that canines — regardless of breed — did better than any other monitoring method. They detected between 3.7 and 4.7 times more black bears, pied martens and bobcats than camera traps, and they could find targets much more quickly than methods that rely on wildlife to trigger a camera or require long searches.

It’s no wonder dogs are good at detecting wildlife: After all, their noses can contain 50 times more scent receptors than a human’s, and they can often detect extremely small concentrations of an odor and even find plants and animals underground.

Annegret Grimm-Seyfarth, an author of the study, has a border collie she trained to track down crested newts and otter droppings, which provide important information on the animals’ diets and genetics. In one study she conducted, trained detection dogs could distinguish between otter species with up to 100 percent accuracy, and they were twice as fast at finding the droppings than humans.

“If you select the right dog, know enough about the target species, and design the study accordingly, this can be an excellent detection method,” she said in a news release.