A super skilled sniffer dog called Freya is helping to track down highly-endangered great crested newts in an attempt to save the species.

The six-year-old English springer spaniel’s powerful nose can sniff out the semi-aquatic creatures even when they are hiding underground, say scientists who found that Freya was able to locate the newts 87% of the time.

The great crested newt is a species of special conservation concern across the UK as well as central and northern Europe.

Though much is known of their lives in water, their behavior on land is not well understood. They are often hidden underground in burrows for mammals or in rocky crevices. By being so hidden, it’s difficult to gather data about them.

Great crested newts are found in freshwater ponds, woodlands, farmlands, pastures, and wetlands.

They have black warty skin with a striking orange stomach and can be found across lowland England and Wales, but due to a loss of ponds across the years, the UK populations have fallen accordingly.

Freya went out to investigate how the environment might influence their detection.

She was tested to see whether she could identify the newts at a range of distances and in different types of land, including sandy or clay soil either with or without vents, which are present in mammal-like burrows.

While she had two false positives during the first run-through, she had an 87% success rate overall.

She was also able detect newts both in sandy soils and clays, vented and unvented.

Over 128 trials, published together in PLoS One, she showed an 88% success rate, with the 12% of false calls generally being false positives.

Freya was significantly faster at detecting great crested newts in vented soil versus unvented soil, naturally because more scent-carrying air would be leaving the burrows.

According to Nikki Glover, the study author of this study, other dogs will likely need significant training in order to reach the same success rate as Freya. Accuracy also depends on the particulars of the site.

“This groundbreaking research shows that detection dogs are a valuable tool to help locate amphibians, especially those who use subterranean habitats,” explained Ms. Glover. She is a Salford University research student.