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...work at the forensics division of the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at the University of California at Davis, the CSI of the four-legged world. The humble surroundings bear only slight resemblance to the flashy labs you see on TV crime shows, but the division's record of success reads like a Hollywood script. In its first year of operation, the lab helped prosecutors win a tricky sexual-assault conviction in Iowa in which the key clue was dog urine (the victim was unable to identify the suspect, but her dog had relieved itself on his truck during the assault). "Once...
...forensics lab was established in 1999 out of necessity. The university's genetics lab, which specializes in verifying horses' lineages, was getting more forensic requests than it could handle. "Police labs are only set up to do human work, and they were overwhelmed with that," Wictum says. "If they had animal evidence, they would just set it aside...
There are other private and university labs that do forensic DNA testing of pets and farm animals, but none are as big or as busy. The Davis lab boasts the largest database of domesticated-animal DNA in the U.S.--including samples from 1.5 million horses, 25,000 dogs and a barn full of other species, from cows and goats to llamas and alpacas. Last year it fielded roughly 60 criminal cases, plus another 40 or so from insurance companies (typically trying to identify animals that caused property damage) and private citizens (usually wanting to know if the remains found...
Getting answers from animal samples is often easier than extracting them from humans. Many pets are fastidious groomers, and the saliva covering the fur they shed makes it a far better source of DNA than snippets of human hair. The lab has also developed reagents specific to certain animals, making it harder for a sample to be hopelessly contaminated by, say, a scientist's sneeze...
...fact, the lab is so good at what it does that it may end up getting less work, not more. Forensic scientist Teri Kun remembers one customer who used to regularly send cattle samples seized from rustlers; these days he tends to get confessions as soon as suspects learn DNA tests will be ordered. For the same reason, it's rare than an animal- abuse case referred to the lab ever makes it to court. "Once you have the DNA analysis," says Wictum, "people end up pleading...