Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to these short stuff. There's Chuck, there's Josh,
Speaker 1: that's me, and there's Jerry over there. Uh, no time
Speaker 1: to talk any further. Let's get started. We're talking about
Speaker 1: dolphins disarming by Are you gonna do that every time
Speaker 1: as long as I get a laugh out of you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will laugh every time. Well, then every time it
Speaker 1: is because I'm laughing, because then we do this and
Speaker 1: it takes more time than it does. I hadn't thought
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, maybe I will stop doing that because
Speaker 1: I really do feel like pressed for time, Like you
Speaker 1: can see him perspiring across the top of my lip. Hey,
Speaker 1: let me try Josh Clark introw. Okay, hey, Josh, have
Speaker 1: you ever seen a dolphin? Yes? I have, Chuck feels
Speaker 1: like it does. It's kind of exhilarating. Yeah, especially when
Speaker 1: you know that that the other person has seen or
Speaker 1: done or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, you're in the club. So
Speaker 1: we've both seen dolphins. We have. Uh, and I knew
Speaker 1: about this. Uh. What we're talking about here is the
Speaker 1: fact that the U. S. Navy uses dolphins to find
Speaker 1: unexploded underwater ocean minds, right, And I knew about this,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know it was kind of cool just
Speaker 1: to see how exactly this works. It was well also
Speaker 1: to think a lot of people have the impression that
Speaker 1: the dolphins are there, like you know, they're sweating themselves,
Speaker 1: they're wiping sweats from their their brows. They're disarming these
Speaker 1: minds right like by like my flipper can't even hold
Speaker 1: these plyers right or was it the green wire or
Speaker 1: the red wire I'm supposed to clip? But that's all right,
Speaker 1: that's not the case at all. They don't actually disarm
Speaker 1: the minds. They don't even really get that close to it.
Speaker 1: What they do is they go find minds for like
Speaker 1: the U. S. Navy. It's not just the U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy that does this. Apparently, um Russia captured Ukraine's dolphin
Speaker 1: patrol in Crimea and the Crimean War. Recently they used
Speaker 1: Dolph Landgren. He can't swim, terrible joke. He sings like
Speaker 1: a stone. He he does. He doesn't like you would
Speaker 1: be a swimmer, does he? He know he's too he's
Speaker 1: got too much like muscle, you know, which I mean
Speaker 1: sounds counterintuitive, but yeah, he does look like he would
Speaker 1: sink for sure. Uh yeah, So what do you say
Speaker 1: Russians use him. I'm sure other people do too. Rite
Speaker 1: a lot of people do. And again it's they're not
Speaker 1: using them to disarm the mind. They're using them to
Speaker 1: find minds. And the reason they use dolphins to find
Speaker 1: minds is because there are um there's no technology that
Speaker 1: we have that comes even close to rivaling a dolphins
Speaker 1: ability to find something in very murky water with a
Speaker 1: lot of loud acoustic noise and um that that may
Speaker 1: be disguised to look like something else. And minds fall
Speaker 1: under all three of those categories. Yeah, so what a
Speaker 1: dolphin does and we'll get to how they do it,
Speaker 1: But they are trained to do this specifically with just
Speaker 1: like they would be at uh at stinky old Sea
Speaker 1: World with like you know, fish is their real board
Speaker 1: to do their little tricks. But they learned to search
Speaker 1: for these mines. Find one and like you said, they
Speaker 1: could be like fifty ft away. It's not like they
Speaker 1: have to go knock on it or anything like that,
Speaker 1: and it probably wouldn't explode anyway. Um. So they go
Speaker 1: find one, they swim back to the boat and ring
Speaker 1: a bell or you know, some sort of signifier that
Speaker 1: they've worked out. They set off a firework, they shoot
Speaker 1: a flare at the captain. Uh. And then the human says,
Speaker 1: all right, good job. Your work is not quite done though,
Speaker 1: because all you're doing is saying there's something down there.
Speaker 1: Now here is a uh, an acoustic transponder, and uh,
Speaker 1: you go take this. He puts it in his little fist,
Speaker 1: and then the dolphins swims back to the mine and
Speaker 1: now they have you know, it's like it's a transponder,
Speaker 1: so they actually know where it is now, right, And
Speaker 1: then they come back and they get the fish, which
Speaker 1: is really what they're they're kind of after. If you
Speaker 1: remember our Star Dogs episode, it's it's kind the thing
Speaker 1: like they're after a fish. They know if they go
Speaker 1: do this, they'll get a fish. And people think dolphins
Speaker 1: are smart. They don't. They're dumb because they don't realize
Speaker 1: there's fish everywhere in that ocean. So, chuck, how how
Speaker 1: would a dolphin do this kind of thing? Why is
Speaker 1: a dolphins so much so, so vastly superior to anything
Speaker 1: that humans can come up with technology wise? Well, humans
Speaker 1: are pretty good at coming up with technology. Frankly, that
Speaker 1: is correct. But um, we use sonar, and they use sonar.
Speaker 1: But they've been using sonar a lot longer than we've
Speaker 1: been using sonar. That's the point of this article. That
Speaker 1: really is sort of it. Like they mean, dolphins have
Speaker 1: been around way longer than we've been using sonar, and
Speaker 1: that's there their chief I mean, I guess it's sort
Speaker 1: of a communication device. Oh yeah, definitely is. They communicate,
Speaker 1: But it's also the way that they see I guess
Speaker 1: it's the best way you could put it. They see
Speaker 1: what they're there, well, they don't have ears. They see
Speaker 1: with we normally, what might think of these things that
Speaker 1: we might hear? Yeah, and that's why it's so tough
Speaker 1: to kind of wrap your head around what they're doing.
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, if if our vision
Speaker 1: is nothing but a bunch of electrical impulses stimulated by
Speaker 1: light that forms like a mental conception of an object
Speaker 1: in our brain, that's exactly what dolphins are doing. But
Speaker 1: they're doing it with sound. They're shooting out like a
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and when it comes back, it tells
Speaker 1: them about that object and it forms an impression in
Speaker 1: their brain just like we do. Visually. They do orally,
Speaker 1: but not through the mouth, I mean orally a a
Speaker 1: really well put uh yeah, and supposedly they are so
Speaker 1: good at this kind of echolocation that they can tell
Speaker 1: the difference from fifty feet away between a BB gun
Speaker 1: pellet being dropped in the water and a kernel of
Speaker 1: corn being dropped in the water. Yeah, which is again,
Speaker 1: now we're starting to reach the point where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now I see why they're so much better than than
Speaker 1: our technology. Like, I can see that. I could if
Speaker 1: you put a baby in a corner of a kernel
Speaker 1: of corn next to each other fifty ft away, I
Speaker 1: can do that. I can see that. But if the
Speaker 1: visibility underwater, sure could, all right, if the visibility underwater
Speaker 1: is like two ft in front of your face, you
Speaker 1: couldn't do that. A dolphin could, which is why they
Speaker 1: come in handy, right. And so we talked about echo
Speaker 1: location with bats before. Uh, and I feel like with
Speaker 1: something else, but definitely with bats. That was one of
Speaker 1: our great long form episodes, probably whales Whales episode, Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably so. But dolphins used the same process. Um, they
Speaker 1: use their nasal passages and they make that little clicking
Speaker 1: sound that you did so well. Uh, they send it
Speaker 1: to the forehead and that focuses the sound into like
Speaker 1: a beam that shoots out into the water. Let's step one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then what happens after that, well after that because
Speaker 1: it's echo location, you know, it works just like with
Speaker 1: the bats. Things bounce off and come back to them. Uh.
Speaker 1: In case of bats, it's you know, mosquitoes and things
Speaker 1: like that, or or stupid humans with tennis rackets. Um,
Speaker 1: it bounces back to the dolphin as that echo and
Speaker 1: then they absorb that into their jaw like a tennis racket,
Speaker 1: like it's oh no, poor dolphin, poor dolphin. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this part is kind of gross sounding, but there is
Speaker 1: a um what Jane McGrath referred to as a passage
Speaker 1: of fat in the jaw, and that's just really just
Speaker 1: a conductor that conducts the sound to the inner ear
Speaker 1: of the dolphin, which and then all the nerve impulses
Speaker 1: get going and then the brain starts firing. And like
Speaker 1: you said, just like we see something, they can say, wow,
Speaker 1: that thing is around like a bb or it's shaped
Speaker 1: kernel shaped like a corn kernel, or where they go, hey,
Speaker 1: it's a c mine that things are gonna blow. I better,
Speaker 1: or that's a fish. I don't even need to go
Speaker 1: back to the boat, right, I can eat so chuck, Um,
Speaker 1: let's take an ad break and then we will come
Speaker 1: back and we'll talk about how not everybody's super hip
Speaker 1: with the idea of using dolphins in war. Okay, we're back,
Speaker 1: and like I said, not everybody is really happy that
Speaker 1: the U. S. Navy is using dolphins. And actually, I
Speaker 1: should say, real quick, Chuck, I want to fit this in. Um. Oh,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have even said I wanted to fit it in.
Speaker 1: That's using up valuable time. So I the Navy started
Speaker 1: using dolphins quite by accident. I guess in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: there was a study where they started paying attention to dolphins.
Speaker 1: They started to study them, like I just said, and um,
Speaker 1: they were trying to figure out if they could learn
Speaker 1: anything from offense to make torpedoes more I guess aqua
Speaker 1: dynamic so that they could move through the water horse
Speaker 1: you look to a dolphin, right, And they didn't learn
Speaker 1: anything for torpedoes, but they were like, wait, these things
Speaker 1: are super smart and they have amazing echo location. Maybe
Speaker 1: we should figure out something else for him. And they
Speaker 1: put them into use. Um pretty shortly after that they
Speaker 1: started training them. They said, they're pretty smart. But here's
Speaker 1: the hitch. They don't realize they're surrounded by fish in
Speaker 1: the ocean, right, They think they can only get them
Speaker 1: from this stupid bucket on the boat. It's also possibly
Speaker 1: just really lazy. Maybe maybe like if I had, like
Speaker 1: I can go to a grocery store, but if I
Speaker 1: had if I was laying on the couch and someone
Speaker 1: dropped by and dropped food in my mouth, right exactly
Speaker 1: all over it. Yeah, that's a really good analogy. I
Speaker 1: get it now. So um, alright, First of all, we
Speaker 1: we already said that they don't disarm them, and they
Speaker 1: don't even get that close. So you might think that
Speaker 1: even animal rights activists would be like, hey, this is fine.
Speaker 1: They're not getting close even if they did. Like I
Speaker 1: said before, they're not going to explode, because they're meant
Speaker 1: to explode when a ship hits it, not you know,
Speaker 1: any octopus kind of floating by, because that would defeat
Speaker 1: the purpose of putting a mine in the ocean. Right. Uh.
Speaker 1: So you would think like, all right, what's the harm then,
Speaker 1: But it turns out there actually is quite a bit
Speaker 1: of harm that could that could come about. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: if you have a trained team of dolphins that you
Speaker 1: know you're using in one place, say the Atlantic, and
Speaker 1: you suddenly need them over in the Pacific. You gotta
Speaker 1: get them from point A to point B and there's
Speaker 1: there's Dolphins may not be acclimated to the Pacific, especially
Speaker 1: if it's like the Northern Pacific and it's super cold
Speaker 1: and they're used to the Middle Atlantic where it's relatively warm. Right,
Speaker 1: That's one thing. Another thing is transporting them there alone
Speaker 1: is an ordeal for the dolphins. Yeah. I mean, anyone
Speaker 1: who's ever seen a whale or a dolphin or a
Speaker 1: big shark like wrapped up in that that sling being
Speaker 1: like lifted out of the ocean into a plane or
Speaker 1: something to a tank. It's just like it looks awful.
Speaker 1: Nothing about that makes it look like that any of
Speaker 1: those animals are psyched that that's happening. Right. Air travel
Speaker 1: is designed for humans, and it's a nightmare for humans, right,
Speaker 1: Imagine what it's like for a dolphin. Yea, at some
Speaker 1: points a lot of stress on their body and there
Speaker 1: you know, it might sound hippie dippie, but on their
Speaker 1: emotional well being, you know, on their earth spirit and
Speaker 1: well we've talked about zukos. This it's a real thing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure, for sure, And I would imagine
Speaker 1: that if you want to drive a dolphin insane, there
Speaker 1: are worse ways to do that than putting it on
Speaker 1: an airplane taking it for a ride about. And there
Speaker 1: were um, there was actually uh, they were going to
Speaker 1: use some dolphins as part of a dolphin sea lion team.
Speaker 1: Sea lion or seal. One of the two. Think we'll
Speaker 1: sea lions do this as well. Then it was a
Speaker 1: dolphins sea lion team. They actually have can There are
Speaker 1: naval teams made up of sea lions and dolphins work
Speaker 1: together that not only discover minds, they're also trained to
Speaker 1: discover like underwater saboteurs, divers swimmers who aren't supposed to
Speaker 1: be there that want to like blow up a military station.
Speaker 1: And the dolphin will go find the guy, go tell
Speaker 1: the sea lion. The sea lion goes and puts an
Speaker 1: ankle cuff on the swimmers shut up, I'm not kidding,
Speaker 1: and they're tethered to a boat now like so the
Speaker 1: sea lion goes and arrests the guy and then they
Speaker 1: both go tell the navy that you got you got
Speaker 1: someone on the line. So the dolphins doing like some
Speaker 1: trick in front of the guy and he's like, wow,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know I'm supposed to plant this bomb,
Speaker 1: but that's pretty neat looking. And then he looks down
Speaker 1: and he's like, oh again dolphins and then the sea
Speaker 1: lion and the dolphin high five. Yeah, but that's so.
Speaker 1: They were going to set up a patrol in the
Speaker 1: in Puget Sound in Washington State. There's an army port there,
Speaker 1: and uh, they were going to set up patrols, and
Speaker 1: the I think some animal rights group said nope, not
Speaker 1: on our watch, and to raise public awareness, they started
Speaker 1: knitting sweaters for the dolphins. We're going to be transported
Speaker 1: to the to the cold water. And it worked for
Speaker 1: a little while. I think that that they have those
Speaker 1: things now, yeah, I'm sure there's a work around. So
Speaker 1: that's that is dolphins disarming minds, which they don't actually do.
Speaker 1: Correct the dolphins find the minds and h and many
Speaker 1: many people are still not too supportive of that, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean they're innocence and they have no idea
Speaker 1: what the wars, what's going on with the war. You know,
Speaker 1: they don't know what they're being used for. It's just
Speaker 1: it's a moral quandary for sure. Yeah. The one thing
Speaker 1: I couldn't find really quick before we go is what
Speaker 1: minds are disguised as. One thing I saw. The only
Speaker 1: thing I saw was that they can be disguised to
Speaker 1: appear like ripples in the water. And I'm like, how
Speaker 1: would you do that? And then I realized, oh, i'm
Speaker 1: sonar it would look like a ripple in the water.
Speaker 1: So I think they were talking about disguising them. I'm
Speaker 1: sure they do visually as well, but I think mostly
Speaker 1: on sonars how they try to disguise on interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would love to meet the person who's like, I
Speaker 1: know how to disguise the mind as a ripple in water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes more sense. I was thinking like they would
Speaker 1: make it look like a big floating kelp mass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so was I at first. And they might, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't find anything like that. I was the only thing
Speaker 1: for him. Very nice. Uh. Well, if you want to
Speaker 1: know more about dolphins disarming sea mines, hang around in
Speaker 1: the sea. See what happens. Uh, And in the meantime,
Speaker 1: get in touch with us. You can send us an
Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff works dot com.