India, May 18 -- Quarmy was a week into her new job when she cracked her first case.

She raced through the forests of the Kaziranga national park at night, leading her team to a cache of firearms stashed here by a poacher.

That was the German shepherd's first big bust. Seven years on, she is a veteran, part of a pack of highly trained super-sniffer canines deployed within wildlife enforcement agencies across India.

Shera, also a German shepherd, led his biggest bust in 2020, when he uncovered a tiger carcass that had been hidden under 6 ft of sand in Shahdol, Madhya Pradesh. He has helped crack over 25 cases involving 40 poachers, over the past decade, and is set to retire this year.

"With their incredible olfactory sense, these four-...