Speaker 1: Oh, folks, friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realist, we are
Speaker 1: returning with a classic episode that I'm gonna say it, guys,
Speaker 1: this is This is a banger. This is such a
Speaker 1: fascinating thing. It's got a venn diagram with ridiculous history
Speaker 1: as well. Animals at war, do you guys remember like
Speaker 1: the cutesy stories that pop up on social media where
Speaker 1: someone will say, you know, in World War what, this
Speaker 1: tiny scrappy yorksheteria was awarded medals by the Queen due
Speaker 1: to his I don't know something.
Speaker 2: I love a good dog metal you know they deserve it.
Speaker 3: Well, it's his courageous efforts in alerting someone about something.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's also the story of the cat who
Speaker 1: may have I don't think he became an officer, but
Speaker 1: he was commended for his rating abilities.
Speaker 2: Well, he was definitely a gentleman, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a tinker tailor's soldier spy add all in the package,
Speaker 1: one feline package of the feline variety. So, whether it's
Speaker 1: Beast of Burden, scouts, sentries, or you know, attack dogs,
Speaker 1: animals have always been conscripted into human conflict, you know,
Speaker 1: like marching into war with elephants and so on, and
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of times. As we discuss
Speaker 1: in this episode, folks will assume that this is ancient history,
Speaker 1: but as we'll learn, the practice continued in the modern
Speaker 1: day and evolved.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Docsin's getting in tiny little holes to root
Speaker 3: out enemy soldiers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or the experiments with cybernetic cat spies, bat bombs,
Speaker 1: you name it. Oh man, this is wild.
Speaker 2: I love this one.
Speaker 3: Well, let's hop right in.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 4: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 4: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 4: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 2: Party on that my name is Nola.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
Speaker 1: guest producer today, Seth Johnson. So help us find a
Speaker 1: nickname or a moniker for him, if you feel so inclined.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
Speaker 1: makes this stuff they don't want you to know now.
Speaker 1: It's it's a fairly well known fact here in the
Speaker 1: studio around the office, and so that we are animal
Speaker 1: lovers ourselves Seth has three dogs, as he as he
Speaker 1: described them, two full blown mutts and one pug. And
Speaker 1: then Matt, you have you have a pooch as well, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, I do have a pooch, a full blow she's
Speaker 3: got the mutts. Yeah, And you've got several feline companions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, oddly enough. And Nolan and I both
Speaker 1: have have cats. Nola, I think you have a cat
Speaker 1: named Robert.
Speaker 2: I have a single cat goes by the name Robert
Speaker 2: interchangeably with Fernando. We named him Fernando before we found
Speaker 2: out that he actually already had a name. It was
Speaker 2: Robert because he has a bob tail. I get it.
Speaker 1: So we're you know, we're not alone by any means.
Speaker 1: Our species has a long story history with animals. They're lovable,
Speaker 1: they're dangerous. If you're listening to this in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: a ton of them are endangered. Yeah, so they're dangerous
Speaker 1: and endangered. And today we're exploring the secret stories of
Speaker 1: animals beyond well, technically the secret story of non human animals.
Speaker 1: Beyond the typical fetch Fido, you know, pet your cat
Speaker 1: kind of things. Beyond the world of pets. We're talking
Speaker 1: about animals in the military.
Speaker 3: And there are a lot of those that you probably
Speaker 3: think of immediately as we're saying that, right, and we're
Speaker 3: going to talk briefly about some of those, but we're
Speaker 3: getting into the deeper waters where animals are used in
Speaker 3: such unconventional ways.
Speaker 1: It gets weird very quickly. But first let's set the stage.
Speaker 1: Here are the facts.
Speaker 2: Animals have been used in combat roles since time immemorial,
Speaker 2: ancient times. Occasionally they would be in support roles, other
Speaker 2: times actually weaponized. While dogs and horses were some of
Speaker 2: the first critters used in war, horses of course, being
Speaker 2: one of the most historical representations of the popular images
Speaker 2: you see of war horses decked out in armor and
Speaker 2: the like. There are only two examples of a much
Speaker 2: wider field than you might expect.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: You know, a horse is a horse. Of course, they're
Speaker 1: some of the most popular. But over the past thousands
Speaker 1: of years, humans have used camels, donkeys, monkeys, elephants, dolphins, rats, cats, pigeons, pigs, oxen, moose,
Speaker 1: and more.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you, thank you for saving us. There it
Speaker 1: felt like it was about the beat was about to drop.
Speaker 1: But we have we have used these to some sort
Speaker 1: of either logistical or tactical advantage for a long, long, long,
Speaker 1: long time, and honestly, we never really stopped nowadays with
Speaker 1: the with the rise of mechanized transportation. Nowadays we see
Speaker 1: horses still around, but not as crucial as they were
Speaker 1: to say, uh, nomadic parties on the steps, right or
Speaker 1: Napoleonic warfare. Yeah, so that means that statistically speaking, humanity's
Speaker 1: favorite non human animal gets the gets the spotlight now,
Speaker 1: and those are dogs. So when you think of I
Speaker 1: mean what most people think of a pet, statistics prove
Speaker 1: they think of dogs. And who hasn't seen those adorable
Speaker 1: pictures of dogs and military vests, you know, or who
Speaker 1: hasn't been at the airport and had a tough time
Speaker 1: try not to pet the drug.
Speaker 3: Dog exactly, or the I've seen several memes of shibinos
Speaker 3: with ak's some of those. Oh no, sorry, no, that's
Speaker 3: not a thing.
Speaker 2: I got one that Trump's all of that. Okay, So
Speaker 2: I saw a picture of a guy with his dog
Speaker 2: insize head was inside a watermelon and it was cut
Speaker 2: and then he opens up the watermelon and there's a
Speaker 2: dog inside. Wow. Yeah, just the head there was like
Speaker 2: a hole cut and the bottom of the watermelon. The
Speaker 2: watermelon is surrounding the dog's head. He's very happy. It
Speaker 2: wasn't you know? There was no no animal, No, not
Speaker 2: at all. But the thing is when you look at it,
Speaker 2: you know, forever second, like what am I looking at?
Speaker 2: And then the watermelon parts and there's a it looks
Speaker 2: like there's a dog like living inside the Watermelon's the
Speaker 2: cutest thing I've ever seen in my life. You canonize that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: well that image alone.
Speaker 3: You know, the United States military can certainly weaponize things
Speaker 3: of that nature, but they have other ways of doing
Speaker 3: this too. There's this thing called the US War Dogs Association,
Speaker 3: and they've kind of given us some basic categories in
Speaker 3: which are types in which dogs have been used for
Speaker 3: military purposes right over the years.
Speaker 1: Maybe not necessarily today, but yeah, they have seven broad
Speaker 1: categories and we can list through these pretty quickly. So
Speaker 1: first century, it's what it says on the tin. These
Speaker 1: dogs worked on a short leash and they were taught
Speaker 1: to give a series of escalating warnings. They could growl,
Speaker 1: they could run around like they were irritated, or of
Speaker 1: course they could bark, and they were most useful during
Speaker 1: the evening when attacked from cover or from the rear
Speaker 1: was most likely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that feels like the most traditional use of
Speaker 3: a dog for almost guarding purposes in a way, you
Speaker 3: know to the days of wolves. Yeah, if you're around
Speaker 3: a campfire or something, having a dog that is tame
Speaker 3: and near your campsite, it would be very, very beneficial.
Speaker 3: But then you've also got dogs that are actually going
Speaker 3: to go out on patrol or scout with humans, and
Speaker 3: a lot of these are trained to work in silence.
Speaker 3: These would these guys would try and detect or at
Speaker 3: least attempt to detect snipers, any kind of other ambushes
Speaker 3: from you know, an enemy force. But especially if you're
Speaker 3: dealing with something that you've got not a quarantined area
Speaker 3: but an area of operation, right, these could kind of
Speaker 3: patrol the area as well. But a type of dog
Speaker 3: needs to be trained for this. You can't just get
Speaker 3: any breed essentially, or any dog with any disposition for this.
Speaker 3: They have to be some of the most highly intelligent breeds.
Speaker 2: German shepherds a lot of the time, right, or at
Speaker 2: least those are attack dogs. They're definitely used as they
Speaker 2: seem pretty versatile because they're very highly intelligent and trainable.
Speaker 1: I imagine you just don't want a Golden Retriever for
Speaker 1: this one. Yeah no, because they would make friends.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, it's crazy too. They've got a statistic here,
Speaker 3: and again we're getting this from the US War Dogs Association.
Speaker 3: Quote scout dogs could detect the presence of enemies up
Speaker 3: to distances of one thousand yards and that's way before
Speaker 3: any of the human operators would notice these enemy forces.
Speaker 2: And just FYI, this is an interesting statistic that I
Speaker 2: found from how stuff works. Actually, the cost of training
Speaker 2: a military dog per animal is around between twenty thousand
Speaker 2: to forty thousand dollars. So this is very specialized training
Speaker 2: that goes into being able to do these tasks and
Speaker 2: doesn't come cheap.
Speaker 1: So the third category there would be the messenger. The
Speaker 1: most desired quality for a messenger dog was loyalty and
Speaker 1: they had to be able to work with two handlers.
Speaker 3: Like one on each side.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and so that can be a problem with
Speaker 1: some animals. When the militaries of the world attempted to
Speaker 1: train cetaceans, they found that they had difficulty passing like
Speaker 1: take getting the dolphin or what have you. To also
Speaker 1: be cool, with the field agent instead of just being
Speaker 1: cool with the trainer. But then we have mind detection.
Speaker 1: Those dogs have a cool nickname. They're called M dogs.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've met an M dog somewhere, but
Speaker 1: it was probably at a dive bar.
Speaker 3: For some reason, all of this is reminding me of
Speaker 3: Metal Gear Solid and the Diamond Dogs. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you guys are aware of that.
Speaker 1: Nope, Okay, well it's been a while since I played
Speaker 1: the Metal Gears.
Speaker 2: The Diamond Dogs. Yeah, that's a David Bowie reference right there.
Speaker 3: It is, that's correct. Oh, should never mind. There are
Speaker 3: lots of there's a lot of games that you need
Speaker 3: to play, all right, keep going.
Speaker 1: So then there are casualty dogs. This is a more
Speaker 1: somber duty, but this is enormously important. They're like search
Speaker 1: and rescue dogs, but they're meant to find the bodies, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, with the is not if the rescue is
Speaker 1: not possible while the person's alive. They are meant to
Speaker 1: pinpoint the casualties.
Speaker 3: Right now, Can we jump back to the mind dogs
Speaker 3: really faster?
Speaker 1: I feel I'm always open to talk about M dogs, man.
Speaker 3: Okay, because I feel like I've been glossed over some
Speaker 3: of the end part there because there's something you found
Speaker 3: in the research bend that was just about how difficult
Speaker 3: that job is. Because remember, these animals are essentially performing
Speaker 3: a job, the job of detecting minds and other metallic
Speaker 3: and non metallic explosive devices, while there's let's say a
Speaker 3: gun battle occurring or explosions happening around. Just how difficult
Speaker 3: that job is to perform in actual combat.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, very stressful, right, yeah, yeah, So the
Speaker 1: m dogs, despite having one of the coolest names, did
Speaker 1: not in fact do the best job just because the
Speaker 1: circumstances were so fraught with peril.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The one I admire immensely were the tunnel dogs oh Vietnam,
Speaker 1: because they used to have humans as well be tunnel
Speaker 1: rats who would drop into the secret Viet Cong tunnels
Speaker 1: hideouts and headquarters, and that just I don't know why
Speaker 1: that one was when that's terrified me, Like if you've
Speaker 1: ever been buried alive, it's not a pleasant experience that
Speaker 1: like you wouldn't I'm not normally claustrophobic, but it just
Speaker 1: takes like one night in the dirt to not want
Speaker 1: to ever do that again.
Speaker 2: Have you seen that whole movie where I think it's Ryan,
Speaker 2: the guy that plays Deadpool. It's like the whole movie
Speaker 2: is him and buried, a live situation. Ryan Reynolds said
Speaker 2: his name was that Deadpool's name?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes it is. But I do not recall this film.
Speaker 2: It's called buried. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it's called Buried.
Speaker 2: Sounds like a very unpleasant film. I don't know that
Speaker 2: Ben would enjoy it very much. I always think of
Speaker 2: that scene in kill Bill when she's buried in the
Speaker 2: coffin and clong her way out, and that was to
Speaker 2: me the most visceral depiction of like what it might
Speaker 2: feel like to be buried alive, and it is. It
Speaker 2: is not good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to totally I agree with you there, but I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: All this stuff makes me think about Docsin's and I
Speaker 3: don't know, honestly, I don't know if.
Speaker 1: They were they were bread to hunt badgers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I know that. I don't know if they
Speaker 3: were used in for the purposes specifically of being a
Speaker 3: tunnel dog. But dang, that's like you couldn't create a
Speaker 3: better version, a better chassis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could have put their legs a little closer together.
Speaker 2: Probably made a little more traction.
Speaker 1: They're bread to hunt all burrowing animals that were in
Speaker 1: need of that position. That's why, despite their diminutive frame,
Speaker 1: they have a warlike belligerent demeanor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I said it.
Speaker 1: It's true.
Speaker 3: It's true. It's very true.
Speaker 2: Ben. Back back to casualty dogs, it makes me think
Speaker 2: of rescue dogs, not not in that what we think
Speaker 2: of when we think of like getting a rescue shelter dog,
Speaker 2: but like dogs that would rescue people from avalanches. You
Speaker 2: might have seen cartoons where you have these Saint Bernards
Speaker 2: in like Switzerland, the Swiss Alps, with these little barrels
Speaker 2: around their neck that I think had some sort of
Speaker 2: brandy in them that would revive like a passed out,
Speaker 2: snowblind traveler and poor sap that got stuck in an avalanche.
Speaker 2: Oh the thing as well.
Speaker 1: I always wondered if if they really did wear those
Speaker 1: and oh, I just I just found a picture. I
Speaker 1: mean it definitely, that's a thing I found. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: found a picture for petful dot com. What's in a
Speaker 1: barrel around a Saint Bridard's neck? But it seems like
Speaker 1: there's a long and disputed history, but they definitely at
Speaker 1: some point at least one of them did it. Tunnel dogs,
Speaker 1: I think, incredibly brave explosive detection dogs, right, that is
Speaker 1: the That is the seventh category you'll see on war dogs,
Speaker 1: and those are just what they sound like. They are
Speaker 1: trained to use the astonishing canine scent of smell to
Speaker 1: detect explosives before human beings could. So these these dogs
Speaker 1: are in Rock, Afghanistan, a lot of other war torn areas,
Speaker 1: and that only factors in these seven categories only factor
Speaker 1: in official working dogs. So these are not those heartwarming,
Speaker 1: buzzfeedy stories of you know, like Sergeant Peppercorns or whatever,
Speaker 1: who is a little you know, cocker Spaniel that the
Speaker 1: French ran into one day and now he has his
Speaker 1: own uniform and people have to salute him and stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh Sergeant pepper Corns.
Speaker 1: It just I don't know, is trying to get something
Speaker 1: besides Sergeant Pepper. You know.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful all those.
Speaker 1: Different you know, Peter Nincompoop or something for all the
Speaker 1: always sunny fans there. But those poochas are inarguably crucial
Speaker 1: in their own very endearing, very sweet way. But that
Speaker 1: is not why we are here today, is it. No?
Speaker 2: But really quick the Saint Bernard neck barrel not a
Speaker 2: real thing. It was an invention of a painter and
Speaker 2: then it just sort of caught the public's imagination. So
Speaker 2: apparently not a real thing. But Saint Bernard's wore bred
Speaker 2: in that area of the Swiss Alps where people were
Speaker 2: They were used as rescue dogs in that way, but
Speaker 2: did not have the barrel.
Speaker 3: Well, now we know Saint Bernard's no barrel, no bar
Speaker 3: But the reason the other things we are talking about
Speaker 3: today are the way animals have been used right for
Speaker 3: wartime and other things. And we've got a couple examples
Speaker 3: that will laundry list here a little bit, but some
Speaker 3: are a little more strange than others. Did you guys
Speaker 3: do an episode of Ridiculous history on the bats? The
Speaker 3: explosive bat idea.
Speaker 2: We've done an episode on a few of these. Actually
Speaker 2: there was another one involving dolphins. But let's start with
Speaker 2: the bats for sure.
Speaker 3: Because they were incendiary, right, that was the whole point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the US almost used bats loaded with napalm
Speaker 1: and something they call Project X ray.
Speaker 2: The idea here was that.
Speaker 1: It would create a wave of fires throughout Japan conflagration
Speaker 1: that would destroy the primary cities. However, the plan was scrapped,
Speaker 1: not because the bats were bad at their jobs, but
Speaker 1: because they were very good and they escaped. They burned
Speaker 1: down a hangar in New Mexico, a military officials car,
Speaker 1: and everyone was against it.
Speaker 2: If I'm remembering correctly. They were just on timers as well,
Speaker 2: so it wasn't like they could be triggered individually in
Speaker 2: some remote way. They were released, and the ideas that
Speaker 2: they would they would kind of roost in the eaves
Speaker 2: of these very flammable homes as you know, like a
Speaker 2: lot of Japanese homes, paper doors and you know, all
Speaker 2: wooden frames, and the idea was smart. Uh, they would
Speaker 2: be undetectable. People wouldn't think anything of it, and it
Speaker 2: just didn't didn't go as planned, but it was a
Speaker 2: pretty smart idea.
Speaker 3: And so so they had just like like a bomb
Speaker 3: essentially attached to them, and it would just.
Speaker 1: Carry unsteerable uh yeah, untrainable.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Grenade rules you pull the pin and you throw, you know, but.
Speaker 3: In this case a million bats. Yeah, because it was
Speaker 3: a ton, right, it wasn't just a couple. It was like, wow,
Speaker 3: that's insane.
Speaker 2: And then on the flip side. The Japanese did a
Speaker 2: weird similar thing, not involving animals, but involving balloons that
Speaker 2: they would just like release and hopefully the winds would
Speaker 2: take them into North America. And a few of them
Speaker 2: made it, but mainly they did not. But this idea
Speaker 2: of just like blindly releasing weaponry into the world is
Speaker 2: very strange to me and dangerous.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is so back to animals. The camels
Speaker 1: have been used as mount some beast of burdens since
Speaker 1: time immemorial, but they were actually used as quote unquote
Speaker 1: suicide bombers during the Soviet War in Afghanistan. And the
Speaker 1: problem with that terminology, of course, is that the camels
Speaker 1: could not consent. Yeah, it's still the very medieval or
Speaker 1: ancient practice of like lighting pigs on fire and then
Speaker 1: sending them to run at the enemy.
Speaker 3: And just remember that Soviet war in Afghanistan. It's not
Speaker 3: the whole two thousand and one and beyond war that's
Speaker 3: back in the day seventy nine to eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is correct and very good point there. Dolphins
Speaker 1: super intelligent, of course, It's no wonder militaries all around
Speaker 1: the world would love to work with dolphins. They're great
Speaker 1: at locating mines, they're trainable, they have some behavioral issues.
Speaker 1: Real dolphin behavior does not match maybe what you think
Speaker 1: of when you think of Flipper or Echo. The dolphin
Speaker 1: I think was the Sega Genesis game.
Speaker 2: That game was hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but Ben, I have also seen that episode of
Speaker 3: Drunk History.
Speaker 2: Trust you're talking about that.
Speaker 1: You're talking about the we're adults here, you're talking about
Speaker 1: the dolphin hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: A true story.
Speaker 2: So with with with Lily, with like the researcher, Yeah, yeah, the.
Speaker 1: LS Lily language language instruction.
Speaker 2: There are some freaky dolphin action going on in like
Speaker 2: a flooded laboratory, like dormitory kind of situation. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's for another day.
Speaker 1: So, along with dolphins, the US Marine Mammal Program also
Speaker 1: trains sea lions to detect enemy divers sea lionel spotted diver,
Speaker 1: and they're supposed to attach a tracking device shaped like
Speaker 1: a handcuff to one of the enemy's limbs.
Speaker 3: Whoa.
Speaker 1: They're also trained to locate and recover military hardware and
Speaker 1: crash victims at sea. The US is very careful to
Speaker 1: state that these cetaceans, you know, the dolph, well, these
Speaker 1: cetaceans and the sea lions and so on are not
Speaker 1: taught to attack people. Yeah, that's what they say.
Speaker 3: They just want to put a little handcuff like thing
Speaker 3: on your leg, that's all, a little anklet, just a
Speaker 3: little tag, just want to access arise.
Speaker 1: So again there's there's some murkiness around there, and it's
Speaker 1: not just due to the depth of the ocean. Will
Speaker 1: will figure out exactly what's going on there or for
Speaker 1: some disturbing things in that regard. But going back to
Speaker 1: the idea of blindly releasing something, one of the most
Speaker 1: dangerous uses of animals in warfare would be the use
Speaker 1: of insects because that ties directly with germ warfare and
Speaker 1: the spread of weaponized disease.
Speaker 3: Yes, there's an historical use of this in Japan when
Speaker 3: that country attempted to use insects as weapons during World
Speaker 3: War two, and the whole idea there was to infect
Speaker 3: the you know, military members and people in front lines
Speaker 3: and people in all places, a lot of places with
Speaker 3: cholera and plague that would be carried by these insects. Essentially,
Speaker 3: like you said, ben as germ warfare, they're just carriers
Speaker 3: for these things.
Speaker 2: Oh and little known fact. Counter fact to this is
Speaker 2: the US tested very similar methods on its own people
Speaker 2: like in Florida, very poor black neighborhoods. In Savannah, Georgia,
Speaker 2: it dropped these flea bombs and it was like, you know,
Speaker 2: that's very swampy kind of area with a lot of
Speaker 2: potential for disease and it was really bad. What do
Speaker 2: we find ben that people actually did were confirmed killed
Speaker 2: because of some of those tests.
Speaker 1: I believe that's correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: In Japan also did this as well, Like we were
Speaker 3: talking about the same thing, dropping fleas of like inside
Speaker 3: bombs essentially. That's that is very very intense to me.
Speaker 3: It's ingenious. But I mean is what do you call?
Speaker 3: Is it biological warfare?
Speaker 2: Yes, it must be right, absolutely, and it's a real
Speaker 2: scorched earth approach too. I mean it's it's really just devious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there's not a when those things are deployed
Speaker 1: there there wasn't any technology in form of like a
Speaker 1: topical treatment or something applied to friendly forces or in
Speaker 1: terms of course, you can't steer the bugs once they're loose.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is brutal, it's insidious. Let's go to something.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a lighter note before we plunge
Speaker 1: full on into the darkness. But let's do that after
Speaker 1: a word from our sponsor. All right, we're back. No,
Speaker 1: you'll love this one. Birds have also been used in
Speaker 1: war fair. Trained parrots were positioned on the Eiffel Tower
Speaker 1: during World War One. This is kind of hilarious. It's
Speaker 1: low key hilarious. The parrots were trained to alert people
Speaker 1: to incoming enemy aircraft. However, the parrots could not differentiate
Speaker 1: between enemy aircraft and Allied planes, so they were just
Speaker 1: losing their frickin minds repeatedly. This is very stressful to
Speaker 1: the humans working with them, so the birds had to
Speaker 1: get mixed. In the Second World War, an American behaviorists,
Speaker 1: the famous BF Skinner, devised a plan to train pigeons
Speaker 1: to ride in missiles and guide them to enemy ships.
Speaker 1: The plan was scrapped for a while, but then resurrected
Speaker 1: from nineteen forty eight to fifty three as Project or.
Speaker 3: Con Isn't that an amazing image that gets conjured in
Speaker 3: your brain? A pigeon piloting a missile? Nope, or a bomb? Yeah,
Speaker 3: don't care for it.
Speaker 1: It's like Doctor Strangelove. But now it's a pigeon with
Speaker 1: the hat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the bombs are coming down. The parrots are
Speaker 3: like German aircraft.
Speaker 2: Don't like it one bit, so.
Speaker 1: Nolan, in the interest of your sanity, we'll move on
Speaker 1: there too. We are just scratching the surface here. While
Speaker 1: the initial idea may seem unorthodox, the logic does bear up.
Speaker 3: Oh I like that it, she bears up.
Speaker 1: Oh ah man, all right, you got me on that
Speaker 1: on fair and square. First, some animals do naturally have
Speaker 1: abilities superior to those of humans. Technology has done a
Speaker 1: lot to mitigate this gap in recent years, but in
Speaker 1: some cases animals still remain the superior, most cost effective solution.
Speaker 1: The nose of a dog is amazing, right, it's tough
Speaker 1: to replace that.
Speaker 3: And second, now this is cold blooded, a lot more
Speaker 3: so than we like to be here. But it's true
Speaker 3: if something goes wrong with an operative, if it is
Speaker 3: an animal and not a human being, it's a lot
Speaker 3: less expensive to train another one of those animals than
Speaker 3: it is to train a soldier. Now, that is that
Speaker 3: is pretty rough to look at it just from a
Speaker 3: war cost perspective in that way, but it's also the
Speaker 3: pr effect of having a lost soldier versus a you know,
Speaker 3: perhaps a lost dog. It's it's different.
Speaker 2: Let's just do lost bird. Okay, we can all stomach that.
Speaker 2: I'm not a lost dog. Makes me sad. Lost bird,
Speaker 2: I'm like better off without him.
Speaker 1: The birds, I like, don't get lost. They're too smart.
Speaker 1: The corve the corvets.
Speaker 3: That's I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think every every living creature could get lost. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a good point, right. So it's no
Speaker 1: wonder that animals continue and will continue to fill various
Speaker 1: rules in multiple militaries. But just how far does this go?
Speaker 1: And what if there is more to the story. Here's
Speaker 1: where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, depending on who you ask, intelligence agencies and militaries
Speaker 2: all across the globe are using animals in a much
Speaker 2: more nefarious and secretive, clandestine ways. So let's talk a
Speaker 2: little bit ben about the Middle East and its strange
Speaker 2: preoccupation with animal conspiracies.
Speaker 1: Oh, this is crazy, Yeah this, Let's spend some time
Speaker 1: on this, and we have to be pretty careful going
Speaker 1: into this. We and all our fellow listeners need to
Speaker 1: realize that this bizarre, distinct subgenre all a different, larger
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory does occur. As you said NOL in the
Speaker 1: Middle East, and it is wrapped up in I would
Speaker 1: say more than its fair share of anti Semitism, because
Speaker 1: we have numerous sources in the Middle East claiming that
Speaker 1: animals are being used in top secret programs to surveil
Speaker 1: local populations, terrorize them, and attack them. However, the majority,
Speaker 1: by which I mean close to one hundred percent of
Speaker 1: these accusations are coming from other countries in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: directly leveled at a single other country, which is Israel
Speaker 1: and occasionally the West quote unquote the West.
Speaker 3: Can we talk about the eagle that got detained, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: the heel or a Hesbelo affiliated TV stations is according
Speaker 3: to a report by Slate, they were saying that an
Speaker 3: eagle was detained north of Beirut because it was suspected
Speaker 3: of being an Israeli spy.
Speaker 1: Yep, there are multiple things. We can even trace it
Speaker 1: back to the one of the beginning reports that made
Speaker 1: international news let's call it the.
Speaker 4: Great Shark Wave of twenty ten ten ten, is.
Speaker 1: That like a Sharknado, it's like a shark NATO plus
Speaker 1: a It's like a shark Nado plus one of those
Speaker 1: monster truck rallies plus jaws. Yeah, that's pretty accurate. It
Speaker 1: sounds cool, right, unless you're one of the people who
Speaker 1: gets wrapped up in the shark wave. In December twenty ten,
Speaker 1: there were several shark attacks off the coast of Egypt
Speaker 1: near some resort towns, and people appeared on the Egyptian media,
Speaker 1: notably one guy named Captain Mustaf Ismail, and this captain
Speaker 1: claimed that a GPS tracking device found in one of
Speaker 1: the sharks was not your garden variety GPS. These GPS
Speaker 1: trackers are not uncommon in the world of terrestrial biology
Speaker 1: or marine biology. But the captain said that this was
Speaker 1: instead of a GPS device, this was a steering device.
Speaker 2: It was a.
Speaker 1: Guiding device planted by what he described as agents of
Speaker 1: Israeli intelligence. Egyptian officials attributed the attacks to more mundane
Speaker 1: factors like the actual politicians and the intelligence community of Egypt. Said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, sharks normally aren't super into eating peas people,
Speaker 1: so we're looking at over fishing, We're looking at maybe
Speaker 1: teaching them to associate people with food, dumping sheep carcasses overboard,
Speaker 1: even unusually high water temperatures. Through their credit, Egyptian scientists
Speaker 1: also weren't buying it because you see, GPS is not
Speaker 1: a remote control. But here the conspiracy match was lit,
Speaker 1: and it once that match was lit, the story itself
Speaker 1: became what people nowadays call lit af Because we have
Speaker 1: several more stories of these strange accusations, they just get weirder.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's go to the Iranian military advisor Hassan
Speaker 2: Feruza body in twenty eighteen, when asked about some environmentalists
Speaker 2: who were under arrest at the time, this military advisor
Speaker 2: said that they weren't your average environment lovers, your average
Speaker 2: tree huggers. Instead, they were representatives of Western powers hiding
Speaker 2: spy lizards in uranium minds. I remember this story very,
Speaker 2: very distinctly. This is fantastic. He claimed that the environmentalists
Speaker 2: had lizards and chameleons on their persons at the time,
Speaker 2: and for Uzibaldi told the Iranian Labor News Agency quote,
Speaker 2: we found out that their skin attracts atomic waves and
Speaker 2: that they were nuclear spies who wanted to find out
Speaker 2: where inside the Islamic Republic of Iran we have uranium
Speaker 2: minds and where we are engaged in atomic activities. Now
Speaker 2: there are some issues with this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, First, atomic waves are not a real thing.
Speaker 1: It is true that in many cases it can be
Speaker 1: illegal to be caught with living creatures in your possession,
Speaker 1: especially if you are smuggling them in or out of
Speaker 1: a country. But unless it's an endangered species, it's a
Speaker 1: weird thing to charge someone with. Next, the scales that
Speaker 1: cover lizards are called skewts. It's neat right sc es.
Speaker 1: And these scoots are made up of two types of
Speaker 1: keratin proteins, keratin A and, in a stunning plot twist,
Speaker 1: keratin B. Neither of these types of protein have any
Speaker 1: special ability to detect uranium or other radioactive materials. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: reptiles are cold blooded, so they want to be where
Speaker 1: it is warmer. Right. Often it's a tough cell to
Speaker 1: say that there are cold blood reptiles who have some
Speaker 1: sort of motivation to burrow deep into a cold uranium mine.
Speaker 1: So overwhelmingly people outside of Iran and outside of Firozibaldi
Speaker 1: say this is hotwash.
Speaker 3: See, the lizards were meant to seek out the warmth
Speaker 3: of the neutrons coming off of the radioactive materials. Guys,
Speaker 3: that's the whole point, right, that's the whole point. You
Speaker 3: release a chameleon in a very cold cave, It's going
Speaker 3: to go directly to the uranium. It's not rocket science.
Speaker 2: It's size.
Speaker 3: Being facetious, of course, But what an interesting concept. Uh yeah,
Speaker 3: because what do you do with them? What do you
Speaker 3: do with the lizards after they've found the uranium?
Speaker 2: What of them?
Speaker 1: Give you some crickets? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: What's the intelligence part? What's the actionable thing?
Speaker 1: I guess it could pinpoint the location of the mind
Speaker 1: would be the idea. So it would have to be
Speaker 1: a numbers game. Then you would either drop them into
Speaker 1: suspected minds, right, or you would drop them into everything
Speaker 1: in a region and just hope that one of them
Speaker 1: seemed to seem to prove the supposition. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: well what about this? If lizards feel a little too
Speaker 1: beyond the pale, how about something more reasonable like squirrels.
Speaker 1: Also in Iran, in two thousand and seven, right.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah, Iran and people working for Iran
Speaker 3: captured fourteen squirrels in the local news agency there said
Speaker 3: that these little guys were equipped with some kind of
Speaker 3: equipment that was meant for spying, and allegedly the squirrels
Speaker 3: had some kind of you know, like a small device
Speaker 3: attached to them essentially that was used for eavesdropping. So
Speaker 3: you would just put them in a park somewhere or
Speaker 3: maybe near a government building, and you could just wait
Speaker 3: for the squirrels to capture whatever conversations occurring at a
Speaker 3: park bench.
Speaker 2: And honestly, that's become sort of a trope, a cliche
Speaker 2: of this idea of the squirrels are listening, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, Like you see it in in sketch. Kay,
Speaker 2: that's exactly right. It was Brick and Morning, Rick and Morty.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was Rick and Morty. They traveled to an
Speaker 1: alternate universe where Mordy is able to hear squirrels and
Speaker 1: they have to burned out. They basically burned down the
Speaker 1: universe to escape, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, but the conversations the squirrels have are so
Speaker 3: clandestine and beautiful. So good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is really good. I en missed that episode.
Speaker 2: Can we talk about the fact that we're gonna be
Speaker 2: on Harmontown. You guys we talked to on social media
Speaker 2: when we talked about I'm really excited about it. It's
Speaker 2: really cool because we're big fans of Dan and we're
Speaker 2: gonna be on Normantown.
Speaker 1: And Dan's gonna be on this show too, assuming we
Speaker 1: don't just irreparably burn our bridges yet we're on Harmontown.
Speaker 1: We're all dan Is still friends with us, We're all
Speaker 1: still friends with him. Who knows, Maybe we'll get rowed
Speaker 1: out on a rail, tired and feathered, hopefully not hopefully
Speaker 1: not hopefully not so Okay, maybe the idea of squirrel
Speaker 1: spies seems a little too far into the realm of
Speaker 1: science fiction. That's fine. I got a different pitch for you.
Speaker 1: How about dolphins. They're super intelligent and in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: Hamas claimed that they arrested a dolphin that was spying
Speaker 1: for Israeli forces. What I love about this is when
Speaker 1: you just hear that headline. I have this picture of
Speaker 1: a grizzled dolphin that can somehow walk, yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: got its flippers, and it's got sunglasses on for some reason,
Speaker 1: and it's being walked out past the cameras.
Speaker 3: They got me. What do the dolphins sounds sound like?
Speaker 3: I don't know. That's not pretty good.
Speaker 1: It's hard to get high enough the dolphins.
Speaker 2: It I thought it was pretty good. I appreciate you.
Speaker 1: So the Times of Israel reported allegations that this dolphin
Speaker 1: was outfitted with spying equipment, including but not limited to cameras.
Speaker 1: Which interesting about that is that we know stuff like
Speaker 1: that has happened before, right in real life. Now, this
Speaker 1: next one is something that I think is safe to
Speaker 1: say none of us saw coming. There's a very specific
Speaker 1: sort of narrative thread with animal spy allegations concerning vultures.
Speaker 2: Massive, massive, disgusting, creepy, gangly dangly red face weirdo creepy vultures. Yes,
Speaker 2: from Lebanon. In twenty sixteen, Lebanon security officials detained a
Speaker 2: huge vulture as described previously by myself with the six
Speaker 2: point five foot wingspan this is making me cringe inside,
Speaker 2: and claimed that it was a surveillance vulture, an animal
Speaker 2: working for Israel, because there was apparently a tracking device
Speaker 2: attached to one of its creepy vulture.
Speaker 1: Feet, which means, I mean, come on, that's the thing, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I had this tracking device attached to its foot.
Speaker 1: Yet again, a GPS transmitter is not some sort of
Speaker 1: magic remote control gizmo. Tel Aviv University was tracking this bird.
Speaker 1: And in addition, this is the weird part. In addition
Speaker 1: to having a GPS transmitter on the bird, the bird
Speaker 1: also had tags on its wings, along with an engraved
Speaker 1: metal ring on its leg that read Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Speaker 1: Not super secret. That's not good spycraft. It's not as
Speaker 1: crappy a job as James Bond, who always like is
Speaker 1: eternally day drunk and tells people his name right and.
Speaker 2: What he does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that guy's a mess. But this bird wasn't much
Speaker 1: better if it was supposed to be a spy. This
Speaker 1: is not the first time Griffin vulture, specifically because these
Speaker 1: are massive, right, it's not the first time one of
Speaker 1: them has been accused to be an agent of massade
Speaker 1: of the Israeli intelligence Agency. In Saudi Arabia in twenty
Speaker 1: and eleven, one was captured, and of course local news
Speaker 1: and scuttle but began to orbit intensely around this concept
Speaker 1: of a quote unquote Zionist plot, and then pretty much
Speaker 1: the same thing occurred in Sudan in twenty twelve. Around
Speaker 1: this part of the world, many people were certain that
Speaker 1: there was a new type of superspy and it was
Speaker 1: not a human, it was not a robot. It was
Speaker 1: a buzzard, which is strange because, again, from everything we
Speaker 1: can tell, these birds were likely being tracked as part
Speaker 1: of some biodiversity conservation project.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was for beneficial means for both the birds
Speaker 3: and for our research. Uh at least that's that's on
Speaker 3: the face of it, right. Maybe, Look, we can't fully
Speaker 3: discount that some of these animals weren't spying for somebody, right, sure,
Speaker 3: because we'll never know. We never got to interrogate these birds.
Speaker 3: That vulture. You never got to put it down a
Speaker 3: room with a polygraph nol.
Speaker 2: And as far as I know, we have no Doctor
Speaker 2: Doolittle esque figure on our in our governments. You know,
Speaker 2: that's all we need, you guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that'd be pretty cool for counterintelligence. So doctor Doolittle,
Speaker 3: I mean, surely.
Speaker 2: There there's I don't know, is there. No, there's no
Speaker 2: kind of like there isn't there a way to communicate
Speaker 2: with dolphins that I make that up. I made.
Speaker 3: We talked about it. It was the whole hand thing.
Speaker 2: No, I mean yeah, but I mean, like you know,
Speaker 2: with your mind, man, come on some kind of helmet,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I feel like that's also a rick and Morty thing.
Speaker 3: But I'm just seeing image.
Speaker 1: There's the intelligence. There's lawnmower man flowers for Algernon esque thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah with the dogs, Okay, and I thought that was
Speaker 1: a good one too. So we also see other birds.
Speaker 1: In twenty thirteen, Turkish officials claimed they captured a kestrel
Speaker 1: falcon spying for you guessed it, the state of Israel.
Speaker 1: There's a great illustration of this alleged culprit over at
Speaker 1: tabletmag dot com. Like the other birds, this kestrel has
Speaker 1: a bunch of markers identifying it as a research subject,
Speaker 1: and people are thought to be researching migratory patterns. The
Speaker 1: problem is that the very signs that should have made
Speaker 1: it plain these birds were part of various studies were
Speaker 1: instead taken as evidence of spycraft. And then the very
Speaker 1: next year, fishermen in Egypt suspected a stork of being
Speaker 1: the next James Bond. So far, so far, astute listeners
Speaker 1: will notice the trends here we mentioned at the top
Speaker 1: the country's claiming the conspiracies of foot in the Middle
Speaker 1: East almost universally accuse one country of creating these animal spies.
Speaker 1: So it is doubtlessly true that anti Semitism is informing
Speaker 1: some of these claims. If it is possible to bracket
Speaker 1: that racism and that discrimination and just look at the facts.
Speaker 1: Could any of these claims about animals as spycraft and
Speaker 1: animals and war, could any of them be true? We'll
Speaker 1: tackle that after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So if we just look at the trends, the claims
Speaker 1: of birds being used for spying often seem to be
Speaker 1: cases of birds that were being tracked for science rather
Speaker 1: than some sort of intelligence agency. Allegations of squirrels to
Speaker 1: date remain unproven.
Speaker 3: And if you know anything about what the squirrels are
Speaker 3: doing or talking about, please write to us right now.
Speaker 1: Or run be safe. You can only save yourself.
Speaker 2: It's too late. It's too late.
Speaker 1: If you nodded, they heard you. It's true that there's
Speaker 1: no solid proof for against the squirrel thing. Yet, however,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of former CIA agents and wildlife
Speaker 1: experts who are very skeptical about this because they think
Speaker 1: it would be very difficult to train a squirrel or.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you could, you would have a trained squirrel,
Speaker 3: and not a squirrel that appears to be just your
Speaker 3: run of the mill guy out there collecting food.
Speaker 1: And this all leads mainstream writers to dismiss a lot
Speaker 1: of the wilder conspiratorial accusations. Writing for the Toronto Star,
Speaker 1: journalist Gil Jarren says, many animals undoubtedly serve in Israel's
Speaker 1: army and security services. Dogs sniff out bombs, I'll paka
Speaker 1: help mountaineers carry their loads, which I do not know
Speaker 1: and is true and is cool. But tales about the
Speaker 1: use of sharks, birds, rodents, or, as it has also
Speaker 1: been claimed, insects and the service of the military are
Speaker 1: more the fruit of imagination than hard facts. So with
Speaker 1: that in mind, let's go to the facts, the crazy,
Speaker 1: strange facts. The United States is continuing to work with
Speaker 1: underwater creatures, evaluating their usefulness as spies. Remember we talked
Speaker 1: about that twenty ten sharkwave accusation right off the coast
Speaker 1: of Egypt. It turns out that back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, the Pentagon looked into using cybernetic sharks as spies,
Speaker 1: and in twenty nineteen the BBC reported on it.
Speaker 3: It sounds not real. Yes, I've just got to couch
Speaker 3: that if none of this sounds real until you see
Speaker 3: it on the BBC website based off of a declassified document.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to read part of this. The latest
Speaker 3: project from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects DARPA. As
Speaker 3: you know, we're big fans of darpover.
Speaker 1: Sound cue at this point.
Speaker 3: Really. So they aim to improve military intelligence by using
Speaker 3: a range of aquatic creatures from large fish to humble
Speaker 3: single celled organisms, and they're using them all as underwater
Speaker 3: warning systems.
Speaker 2: And here's a quote. We're trying to understand what these
Speaker 2: organisms can tell us about the presence and movements of
Speaker 2: all kinds of underwater vehicles in the ocean. That's from
Speaker 2: doctor Lori odor Nato, who's the program manager of the
Speaker 2: Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors or PALS project. I love my
Speaker 2: underwater pals.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, of course the Navy comes through and they're saying, look, look, guys,
Speaker 3: we've said this before in the past. We're gonna say
Speaker 3: it again. We are not trying to use any creatures
Speaker 3: of the sea to do any kind of aquaman stuff.
Speaker 3: We're not trying to have them harm the water craft,
Speaker 3: the ships and stuff. We're to hurt the humans that
Speaker 3: are out there. We're just using them as sensors.
Speaker 2: Do you believe that.
Speaker 3: No gonna, Why would you not train it? I guess
Speaker 3: it would be much more difficult to train a cetacean
Speaker 3: to attack a specific person a specific uniforms.
Speaker 1: You remember faces, Oh, like an.
Speaker 3: Assassin, So targeting a single person rather than a a
Speaker 3: I mean a generic type of soldier or military person.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's some signal that you have to give to
Speaker 1: prove your friendly. But also, I'm very taken annul a
Speaker 1: video games amount. I'm very taken with the idea of
Speaker 1: a dolphin centric assassin's creed franchise.
Speaker 2: You know what I want is a cephalopod centric assassin organization. Really,
Speaker 2: I mean think about it. They're like super smart. They
Speaker 2: can like open doors and stuff. Didn't you see I
Speaker 2: find a NEMO too. They only live two years though
Speaker 2: that's a bummer.
Speaker 1: That's part of what And they're the closest thing we
Speaker 1: have to approve an alien intelligence.
Speaker 3: Okay, so fix the aging problem right the walk on
Speaker 3: the lens?
Speaker 2: I remember, you just put them in a mech situation.
Speaker 1: I wrote a great sci fi story about Did I
Speaker 1: ever send you that?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's a trip. But let's not lose that
Speaker 1: piece of the story. Maybe there were not any remote
Speaker 1: controlled cybernetic shark drones, which again sounds insane off the
Speaker 1: coast of Egypt, but the United States certainly wanted or
Speaker 1: wants to make them, or.
Speaker 3: Did, and it's just not it's still classified.
Speaker 1: The project was discussed that the two thousand and six
Speaker 1: Ocean Sciences Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a lot of news about the proposal after that,
Speaker 1: and you know, if it was just in the proposal
Speaker 1: stage at that time, it doesn't feel like a few
Speaker 1: months would be enough time to get something like that
Speaker 1: in the field, right, certainly if that was their starting position.
Speaker 1: And we can't forget that. People in Norway did find
Speaker 1: a runaway whale spy who is very friendly, very acclimated
Speaker 1: to humans.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you can read about that on the BBC.
Speaker 3: There are several Again, the BBC has some amazing reporting
Speaker 3: on spy animals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there must be someone in there. It's like their thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it really was a beluga whale, right, that's
Speaker 3: this is the one we're referencing that had a harness
Speaker 3: on it that specifically was let me see if I
Speaker 3: can find exactly what it said yes, it had a
Speaker 3: harness on it that was supposedly Russian or of Russian origin,
Speaker 3: and it also had a go pro holder like one
Speaker 3: of those little, you know, the mounts for a GoPro,
Speaker 3: But there was no go pro attached on this beluga
Speaker 3: whale that was found. It's certainly odd. But again, when
Speaker 3: people spoke about it, or the officials, the Russian officials
Speaker 3: when they chimed in, they were basically saying, come on, guys,
Speaker 3: you think we would put one of our specially trained
Speaker 3: spy belugas out there with a harness they clearly is
Speaker 3: Russian by Beluka.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, which goes back to the birth thing, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's a spy, why does it say Tel Aviv University?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But it's also like one of those tropes you see
Speaker 2: in like sci fi moves or one of like a
Speaker 2: satellite falls and people like, it's clearly a Russian satellite
Speaker 2: because it's got Russian text on it, Like would they
Speaker 2: really do that? Maybe they would, I don't know, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Especially the question is did they intend to get caught?
Speaker 1: Who did they want to identify this?
Speaker 3: Well, here's the crazy thing. It is, at least according
Speaker 3: to this reporting. There was a colleague of the Russian
Speaker 3: official who would comment in saying, you know this is crazy.
Speaker 1: Come on.
Speaker 3: Of course it wasn't this, but they were saying they
Speaker 3: don't do such experiments with Belugas specifically to have them spy,
Speaker 3: but they have. The Russian military has been capturing and
Speaker 3: training Belugas for quite some time. So again it's like
Speaker 3: the shark thing, like if you go back four years,
Speaker 3: then you go, oh, wait, there are some programs that
Speaker 3: seem pretty similar to this.
Speaker 1: Right, so maybe the maybe the accusations are sort of
Speaker 1: urban legends, right, maybe they're they're growing from these legitimate concerns.
Speaker 1: But at this point it is no secret that militaries
Speaker 1: and intelligence agencies do very, very creepy things, and furthermore,
Speaker 1: tail as old as time. When people are prejudiced against
Speaker 1: a giving group, it's not hard for them to accept
Speaker 1: even the most ridiculous accusation. If you, for some reason
Speaker 1: hate a person or a people or a group of
Speaker 1: any sort, then your BS detection, your BS meter is
Speaker 1: all out of whack. You'll believe anything. If you hate
Speaker 1: everyone who watches Night Court, then you see a study
Speaker 1: that says people who watch Night Court are you know,
Speaker 1: necrophiliacs or something. You'll just sort of nod to yourself
Speaker 1: and go, that makes sense, checks out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know that whoever that person is that hates
Speaker 3: people who like who watch Night Court, there's something very
Speaker 3: wrong with them. And that is the only kind of
Speaker 3: person that I hate is people who hate people who
Speaker 3: watch night Din.
Speaker 2: The guy from Night Court just pass away, Harry Anderson, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he deeps, that's the way. Last year, at the age
Speaker 2: of sixty five.
Speaker 1: I read a study mat that people who hate people
Speaker 1: who hate Night Court actually tend to perform higher on
Speaker 1: spatial aptitude tests. Do you believe that I did?
Speaker 3: You just find that somewhere?
Speaker 1: I found it somewhere.
Speaker 3: Sure, so you used your aptitude to find it.
Speaker 2: Good work.
Speaker 1: So again, however, despite the fact that we cannot we
Speaker 1: cannot like extract the socio political soil in which this occurs.
Speaker 1: We cannot extract that racism. It is true despite that
Speaker 1: that there are clear improving cases of animals being used
Speaker 1: in ways that are, like you said, Matt, similar to
Speaker 1: the more conspiratorial claims we see floating around. We cannot
Speaker 1: confirm whether the specifics of a certain narrative are true.
Speaker 1: You know, like twenty ten off the coast of Egypt,
Speaker 1: there were cyber sharks. But we can point out a
Speaker 1: couple of things in the news just a few days ago.
Speaker 3: That, yeah, just happened really fast before you even get
Speaker 3: into this. But there's some weird serendipity occurring with this
Speaker 3: show right now, and we won't go into all of it.
Speaker 3: But Ben and I were going to record this episode
Speaker 3: last week. Uh huh. Noel wasn't gonna be able to
Speaker 3: be here, and something came up in my personal life
Speaker 3: where we weren't We were not able to record this thing.
Speaker 3: Then over the weekend there was reporting specifically about this thing,
Speaker 3: which blew my mind right.
Speaker 1: Yes, according to the BBC, in an artcle released just
Speaker 1: a few days before we recorded this, the CIA finally
Speaker 1: admitted it used pigeons to spy on Soviet forces in
Speaker 1: an operation nicknamed or code named rather Takana and Operation
Speaker 1: to Kana. Fit these pigeons with these incredibly endearing tiny
Speaker 1: cameras right.
Speaker 3: On the breast area, facing down a little.
Speaker 1: Bit right, so as the pigeon is flying, the camera
Speaker 1: would automatically take photos of whatever was within line a site.
Speaker 1: They didn't stop there Takana also trained ravens to deliver
Speaker 1: and retrieve objects up to forty grams from windowsills of
Speaker 1: otherwise inaccessible buildings.
Speaker 3: And let's just go really fast into the Takana pigeons
Speaker 3: with those cameras. It's something so fascinating. So let's imagine that.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's the way. It's the way carrier pigeons
Speaker 3: would work. Back in the day. Pigeons would be taken
Speaker 3: from place A with wherever you're going, Right, if you
Speaker 3: were going to be in a caravan going somewhere, you're
Speaker 3: going to another encampment somewhere, Yeah, you'd carry a pigeon
Speaker 3: that had the home of A. You go to place B.
Speaker 3: You release that pigeon at B with a message. It
Speaker 3: carries it back to its home in A. Right, So
Speaker 3: they would do something very similar where they would train
Speaker 3: the pigeon to have a home in place A. Then essentially,
Speaker 3: if imagine drawing a straight line to play B and
Speaker 3: in between those two places would be let's say a
Speaker 3: Russian facility or Soviet facility back in the during the
Speaker 3: Cold War, in between directly in between those two places,
Speaker 3: and they would release them from Place B. It would
Speaker 3: fly over this facility, take a ton of pictures and
Speaker 3: again you'd release probably multiple or several of them, take
Speaker 3: a ton of pictures as it's going back to its home,
Speaker 3: capture the stuff. It was a brilliant plan and they
Speaker 3: were actually doing it.
Speaker 2: What's the mechanism for taking the pictures?
Speaker 3: It's that little camera we were talking about this.
Speaker 2: Remotely like they're actually timing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, kind of old school exactly. So if they
Speaker 1: fly over something that is not worth photographing, they're still
Speaker 1: going to get a bunch of shots, right. Uh.
Speaker 3: They also had and those ravens that you were talking
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh.
Speaker 2: Man, So okay.
Speaker 1: They used a flashing red laser beam to mark a
Speaker 1: target and a special lamp was used to sort of
Speaker 1: train the bird to come back. According to the BBC article,
Speaker 1: on at least one occasion in Europe, the CIA delivered
Speaker 1: an eavesdropping device by bird via this raven mechanism to
Speaker 1: a window, although there was no audio picked up from
Speaker 1: the target, so they got the bird to do it.
Speaker 1: It's just no one talked about anything important in the
Speaker 1: room where it happened. So the CIA also looked at
Speaker 1: whether migratory birds could be used to detect chemical weapons.
Speaker 1: There were some sort there's they like allude to trials
Speaker 1: where there was some kind of electric brain stimulation to
Speaker 1: guide dogs remotely, and there was a project to put
Speaker 1: listening devices into a cat. This stuff got ugly real quick.
Speaker 1: But I did want to end on a lighter note.
Speaker 3: And I hope this is this lighter are you going
Speaker 3: to talk about?
Speaker 2: This is lighter.
Speaker 1: No tricks, no tricks, no tricks. There is an incredibly
Speaker 1: adorable thing that we'll call the audio dossier, the Otter dossier.
Speaker 3: Okay, I don't know this, Uh it is.
Speaker 2: It reads like a book report.
Speaker 1: It's called a dossier on Lutra the Otter, and it uh,
Speaker 1: this came out of a Freedom of Information Act request. Uh.
Speaker 1: This reads kind of like a book report by someone
Speaker 1: working in the intelligence agencies from Uncle Sam who just
Speaker 1: really loves otters and is trying to find a reason
Speaker 1: for people to use them in experiments. Lutra the Otter
Speaker 1: is a compact, powerful, intelligent animal capable of negotiating land, water,
Speaker 1: and obstacles with great facility. And it goes on to
Speaker 1: talk about how much this person, this anonymous author loves otters.
Speaker 3: OW.
Speaker 1: You can read it on you can read it online
Speaker 1: for free too. It's one of the more pleasant things
Speaker 1: in the vault.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Geo Cities dot FBI. It's like otter fan fiction.
Speaker 1: It's like fiction that's very well put.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really thought you were going to jump straight
Speaker 3: to Acoustic Kitty.
Speaker 2: Acoustic Kitty is the hair tail. That's the one where
Speaker 2: they installed an implant into the kitty's brain. Basically, right, yes,
Speaker 2: very inhumane, bad times.
Speaker 3: And well, well there were listening devices inside the cat,
Speaker 3: or that was that was at least the plan, right
Speaker 3: to release a bunch of these cats with listening devices
Speaker 3: physically inside them.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: But then they tested it one time the and the
Speaker 3: kiddy cat that they put it in immediately jumped out
Speaker 3: into the road and got smashed by a car. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1: The lutra usually sleeps on its head with its arms folded,
Speaker 1: and it likes to sleep with humans.
Speaker 2: Paid someone and it has a cut of tummy.
Speaker 1: It's all but that man, seriously, and then they say, never,
Speaker 1: if possible, confine or leaveing a zoo or kennel an
Speaker 1: otter which has enjoyed any human companionship or freedom.
Speaker 3: Well, there you go.
Speaker 1: This person just was an otter buddy.
Speaker 3: Ah wow uh the basic.
Speaker 1: That you know, I'm gonna stop reading sections of this report.
Speaker 1: If you ever feel down, go check out Adosia on Lutra,
Speaker 1: and do please let us know what you think about
Speaker 1: these allegations of animal spies. What we're finding is that
Speaker 1: while the timeline for a lot of this stuff may
Speaker 1: not match up, the pure potential of the technology is
Speaker 1: there in some cases.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and there's now an historical declassified trail of
Speaker 3: the CIA using animals for these means exactly pretty closely
Speaker 3: to what's being you know, suspected in a lot of places.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean it's true, especially the later ones. And
Speaker 3: like you said, Ben, you can't divorce some of those
Speaker 3: feelings that occur in regions with the reality. It's tough
Speaker 3: to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And that's why we want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Let us know what you think about this. Do you
Speaker 1: think there is any sand to these claims. Furthermore, if
Speaker 1: you had to pick an animal that would cooperate with
Speaker 1: you and an aspir ring, what kind of animal would
Speaker 1: you pick him? Why?
Speaker 2: You can let us know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure at least a few
Speaker 3: of us took honey badgers, right.
Speaker 2: I'm absolutely going to be an otter at this point.
Speaker 3: All right, what about you, met? I mean I would say,
Speaker 3: Honey Badger, if I could have a friend, Honey Badger,
Speaker 3: that would be on my team and do stuff.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be on your team because he doesn't give
Speaker 2: a well, that's.
Speaker 3: The whole point. Though, he wouldn't. He wouldn't g a
Speaker 3: F for anything but me.
Speaker 2: I don't think he would g a F about you.
Speaker 3: No, he would. He would be my boy.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, So we would have to do this podcast
Speaker 1: with an animal that may well attack and eviscerate us,
Speaker 1: and the only thing keeping it in line is that
Speaker 1: it adores you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd be like, yo, stop man, it goes for
Speaker 3: the giblets first.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, and that's our classic episode for
Speaker 1: this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2: That's right, let us know what you think. You can
Speaker 2: reach you to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist
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Speaker 2: Conspiracy Stuff Show.
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