A dog's bark will help determine what sort of animal it has tracked from hundreds of miles away.

Hunters will also be able to give orders on the two-way mobile system.

The development comes as the bear and duck hunting season gets under way.

The phone, equipped with GSM and GSP technology, was developed by the Benefon mobile phone company and Pointer, a company that makes dog tracking devices.

Hunters tested it for more than a year on several dogs in different weather conditions and it works well, said Klaus Ekman, spokesman for the Hunters' Central organisation.

"It's a natural development from the tracking devices that we have been using for some 25 years," Mr Ekman said. "Hunters are able to pinpoint the dog and now they can communicate with it from kilometres away."

Hunters in Finland have permits to fell 103 brown bears of an estimated population of 1,050 by the end of October. Some 200,000 hunters also have permits to shoot 600,000 ducks during the season that ends in December.

The canine cell phones are expected to come into increased use in September when traditionally large groups of hunters set out after some 85,000 elk this year.

Read the full article at Ananova

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