Word: dna
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...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 we had the DNA to connect him to the crime scene, he pled guilty," says acting lab director Beth Wictum...
...animal DNA can sometimes mean the difference between a conviction and an unsolved crime. In a 2001 sexual-abuse case, a 14-year-old mentally handicapped boy told police he had been molested by a man who was licked by his dog during the act. Scientists tested DNA taken from the suspect's skin and found the dog's saliva exactly where the boy had said it would be. The molester pled guilty and got three years in federal prison...
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...