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Turmeric could work, it contains curcumin which is a modest
fluorophore. It also makes it all the way through animals. |
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I'd go for polymer-coated quantum dots - much more
fluorescent, indigestible, and available in a vast number of
emission wavelengths. With a handheld UV
spectrophotometer, and suitable qdot combinations, you
should be able to trace the offending canine. |
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Is turmeric safe for dogs? |
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Is turmeric safe for cats ? |
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// With a handheld UV spectrophotometer, // |
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... on the far end of a long stick ... |
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// Is turmeric safe for dogs? // |
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Probably safer than quantum dots, at least. I've heard those
are quite toxic due to their smallness (a bit like carbon
nanotubes and asbestos). |
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Excited and goaded into action by [bs0u0155]'s revelation relating to turmeric, I bought a mains powered UV LED lamp. After it had arrived from China I recalled that I didn't have any lamps with ES, only bayonet, but invested in an E27-B22 converter. When it in turn arrived from China I was up and running and with the assembly installed in my inspection lamp even more eager to give the idea a test drive. |
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I can confirm that [bs0u0155] is correct, but slightly disappointingly under UV LED illumination turmeric powder only seemed weakly fluorescent. |
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I added a teaspoon per meal for a couple of days. The dog, being a sprocker spaniel, hungrily devoured the meals. I couldn't discern any consequent side-effects on the canine. I retained the following day's poop for thorough examination. |
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With my lamp, and with heart pounding, I illuminated whilst -quite closely- examining the turds. |
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Unfortunately the finding was that the sh**t was not particularly fluorescent. |
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Wondering whether it could be a 'skin effect' perhaps caused by an anal gland coating or some concivably complex sort of digestive processing foible, I carefully scraped the top layer from one of the jobbies to reveal fresh substrate. There was no perceptible difference. The glow was if anything dimmer than a toc-h lamp. |
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I waited a couple of weeks for the dog eggs to go a bit fluffy with mould, wondering whether the mould could perhaps concentrate any UV pigments into its hyphae. There wasn't any increase in the luminosity of the doggy dump. |
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Back to the drawing board.... |
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I noticed that my uranium glass trinkets glowed extremely vividly under the illumination. Do you think, if it were ground down and powdered to a fine talc and buried inside a Bonio biscuit, U- glass could work in the task of making the poo stand out and contrast more against the undergrowth under UV illumination? |
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Bun for experimentation (and having the stomach to deal
with dogshit...). |
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Could you still taste the Turmeric flavour? |
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// Is turmeric safe for dogs? // |
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Perhaps scorpions in a blender as an alternative? |
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Try putting a bit of fluorescein in their food. It's pretty safe. |
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//[bs0u0155] is correct, but slightly disappointingly under
UV LED illumination turmeric powder only seemed weakly
fluorescent.// |
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//day's poop for thorough examination.// |
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Oooohh... that's going the extra mile. |
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So curcumin, the fluorescent component does respond to
UV a little, but its main activity is in the absorbance of
blue (~430nm) light to emit a greeny-orange color (550-
600nm). |
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So, you'll get WAY more emission brightness with a 395 or
455nm LED, they do flashlights with these
wavelengths...Some advertised as being dog-pee
detecting, we're developing a whole dog waste
visualization system here. |
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The reason fluorescence is popularly associated with UV,
is because we can't see the UV excitation light, only the
visible light that comes back from the fluorescent object.
That's usually combined with a darkened room to increase
the eye's sensitivity. When using blue light, you can see
it, and your iris closes and you lose the sensitivity needed
for detecting the emission. So we need a strategy to
selectively see the emitted light without being blinded by
the excitation light. |
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One way is to manipulate the orientation of illumination
vs observation. You want to minimize the amount of light
going from the excitation source into your eye, so
illuminate from the top/side or even better directly
away, which suits the flashlight turd-hunt scenario. |
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For better selectivity, you want some glasses that block
the excitation light, even better, glasses that block
everything outside the greeny-orange. These exist for a
few $ as far as I can tell. |
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That's the rig dialed in, let's have a look at enhancing the
signal. First off, turmeric is mostly not curcumin. It's
about 2-6%, the rest is mixed carbohydrate and planty
type stuff. So, you can extract the curcumin with a
hydrophobic solvent, alcohol works. Grind, add ethanol,
shake for a while, filter and then you can evaporate off
the solvent for a significant ~20 fold enrichment. I can't
find specifics, but there's no evidence of toxicity in dogs
(no data, but mentioned in a curcumin rat study) and
there's studies giving 5% of the total food weight in
turmeric in mice, rats, pigs and monkeys. No acute
effects. |
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There's other fluorescent foods, canola, olive oil <link>
and quinine. Although you'd imagine the oils would be
absorbed and the quinine is both absorbed and
pharmaceutically active. |
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//Try putting a bit of fluorescein in their food. It's pretty
safe.// |
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It's absorbed pretty well, they use oral fluorescein for
angiograms and the like. It's then excreted in urine, which
is useful if anyone tries to poison you with antifreeze. 1,
you may notice the fluorescent drink. 2 You may also
notice the fluorescent pee. Rhodamine, another
fluorophore, distributes quite messily, some in
hair/tissues, some fecal, and some in urine. |
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//olive oil// As far as I can see from the picture, olive oil
seems to emit in the black part of the spectrum. |
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Maybe they confused olive oil and engine oil... |
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// they use oral fluorescein for angiograms and the like. It's
then excreted in urine, which is useful if anyone tries to
poison you with antifreeze. // |
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What if they poison you with antifreeze that doesn't have
fluorescein? |
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An alternative approach to making dog poop fluorescent:
Genetically engineer bacteria that prefer to eat dog poop and are
fluorescent. Feed them to your dog to get them into the gut
flora, or spray them on the ground where your dog poops. |
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//Genetically engineer bacteria that prefer to eat dog poop
and are fluorescent.// |
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The likelihood that you can make a bug that's consistently
more successful than any of the ones already there is quite
low. Even if you took an example already present, then
adding the extra load of the fluorescent protein would make
it lose to its wild type relatives. |
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[bs0u0155] Calling you shirley, wouldn't something in the simple surface protein expression be better than going for a flashy but crippling, heavy metabolic pathway. |
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That's okay as long as you're replenishing said bacteria
regularly. |
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Perhaps you’re looking at the problem backwards.
Simply sprinkle fluorescent powder around your
yard beforehand then look for the black holes
deposited upon it by your dog? |
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Now _that_, [AusCan], is exactly the sort of lateral thinking
that can get a man sectioned. |
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Another option would be to buy a bunch of fluorescent plastic
beads and mix them with the food. They'll go right through,
and a few of them will end up on the surface (of the poop,
not of the dog). If you're feeling really frugal you could
probably even re-use them. |
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