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If you want to enhance a locust to be used as a bomb-sniffing bug, there are a few technical challenges that need solving before sending it into the field.

Is there some way to direct the locust—to tell it where to go to do its sniffing? And because the locusts can't speak (yet), is there a way to read the brain of these cyborg bugs to know what they're smelling?

Yes and yes to the first two questions. Previous research from Washington University in St. Louis has demonstrated both the ability to control the locusts and the ability to read their brains, so to speak, to discern what it is they are smelling. And now, thanks to new research from the McKelvey School of Engineering, the third question has been settled.

In a pre-proof published online Aug. 6 in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X, researchers showed how they were able to hijack a locust's olfactory system to both detect and discriminate between different explosive scents—all within a few hundred milliseconds of exposure.