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This January, archeologists in northwest Spain credited a badger with digging up a stash of ancient coins, minted in faraway places like Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Lyons, and Rome. Around the same time, not to be outdone by a burrowing animal operating in the dark, an amateur sleuth with a metal detector found a Henry III gold penny on a farm near Devon, England. He went on to sell it at auction for £540,000. Then, this spring, a puppy lagotto romagnolo, a breed generally known for hunting truffles, went on his very first walk with his new family in a field near the Irish Sea. The little guy promptly sniffed out fifteen sovereign coins, likely from the nineteenth century and worth £6,000 (about enough to buy one kilogram of the elusive white truffle in Alba, Italy).

However rare and exciting such discoveries may be, they don’t do much for the many businesses that depend on...