January 9, 2025 • 59 mins
Whether as beasts of burden, scouts, sentries or attack dogs, animals have been conscripted into human conflict since the dawn of recorded history. This practice hasn't changed in the modern day -- it's only evolved. Join the guys as they delve deep into some of modern history's strangest rumored (and confirmed) tales of animals in warfare, from would-be weaponized bats to tales of cyborg sharks, surveillance birds and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, folks, friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realist, we are
returning with a classic episode that I'm gonna say it, guys,
this is This is a banger. This is such a
fascinating thing. It's got a venn diagram with ridiculous history
as well. Animals at war, do you guys remember like
the cutesy stories that pop up on social media where
(00:24):
someone will say, you know, in World War what, this
tiny scrappy yorksheteria was awarded medals by the Queen due
to his I don't know something.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I love a good dog metal you know they deserve it.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Well, it's his courageous efforts in alerting someone about something.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah, and there's also the story of the cat who
may have I don't think he became an officer, but
he was commended for his rating abilities.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, he was definitely a gentleman, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yeah, a tinker tailor's soldier spy add all in the package,
one feline package of the feline variety. So, whether it's
Beast of Burden, scouts, sentries, or you know, attack dogs,
animals have always been conscripted into human conflict, you know,
like marching into war with elephants and so on, and
(01:20):
a lot of a lot of times. As we discuss
in this episode, folks will assume that this is ancient history,
but as we'll learn, the practice continued in the modern
day and evolved.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Oh yeah, Docsin's getting in tiny little holes to root
out enemy soldiers.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, or the experiments with cybernetic cat spies, bat bombs,
you name it. Oh man, this is wild.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I love this one.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Well, let's hop right in.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Party on that my name is Nola.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
guest producer today, Seth Johnson. So help us find a
nickname or a moniker for him, if you feel so inclined.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know now.
It's it's a fairly well known fact here in the
(02:41):
studio around the office, and so that we are animal
lovers ourselves Seth has three dogs, as he as he
described them, two full blown mutts and one pug. And
then Matt, you have you have a pooch as well, right.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yes, I do have a pooch, a full blow she's
got the mutts. Yeah, And you've got several feline companions.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, you know, oddly enough. And Nolan and I both
have have cats. Nola, I think you have a cat
named Robert.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I have a single cat goes by the name Robert
interchangeably with Fernando. We named him Fernando before we found
out that he actually already had a name. It was
Robert because he has a bob tail. I get it.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
So we're you know, we're not alone by any means.
Our species has a long story history with animals. They're lovable,
they're dangerous. If you're listening to this in twenty nineteen,
a ton of them are endangered. Yeah, so they're dangerous
and endangered. And today we're exploring the secret stories of
(03:47):
animals beyond well, technically the secret story of non human animals.
Beyond the typical fetch Fido, you know, pet your cat
kind of things. Beyond the world of pets. We're talking
about animals in the military.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
And there are a lot of those that you probably
think of immediately as we're saying that, right, and we're
going to talk briefly about some of those, but we're
getting into the deeper waters where animals are used in
such unconventional ways.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
It gets weird very quickly. But first let's set the stage.
Here are the facts.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Animals have been used in combat roles since time immemorial,
ancient times. Occasionally they would be in support roles, other
times actually weaponized. While dogs and horses were some of
the first critters used in war, horses of course, being
one of the most historical representations of the popular images
you see of war horses decked out in armor and
(04:48):
the like. There are only two examples of a much
wider field than you might expect.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
You know, a horse is a horse. Of course, they're
some of the most popular. But over the past thousands
of years, humans have used camels, donkeys, monkeys, elephants, dolphins, rats, cats, pigeons, pigs, oxen, moose,
and more.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Oh, thank you, thank you for saving us. There it
felt like it was about the beat was about to drop.
But we have we have used these to some sort
of either logistical or tactical advantage for a long, long, long,
long time, and honestly, we never really stopped nowadays with
(05:33):
the with the rise of mechanized transportation. Nowadays we see
horses still around, but not as crucial as they were
to say, uh, nomadic parties on the steps, right or
Napoleonic warfare. Yeah, so that means that statistically speaking, humanity's
(05:54):
favorite non human animal gets the gets the spotlight now,
and those are dogs. So when you think of I
mean what most people think of a pet, statistics prove
they think of dogs. And who hasn't seen those adorable
pictures of dogs and military vests, you know, or who
hasn't been at the airport and had a tough time
(06:19):
try not to pet the drug.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Dog exactly, or the I've seen several memes of shibinos
with ak's some of those. Oh no, sorry, no, that's
not a thing.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I got one that Trump's all of that. Okay, So
I saw a picture of a guy with his dog
insize head was inside a watermelon and it was cut
and then he opens up the watermelon and there's a
dog inside. Wow. Yeah, just the head there was like
a hole cut and the bottom of the watermelon. The
watermelon is surrounding the dog's head. He's very happy. It
wasn't you know? There was no no animal, No, not
at all. But the thing is when you look at it,
(06:51):
you know, forever second, like what am I looking at?
And then the watermelon parts and there's a it looks
like there's a dog like living inside the Watermelon's the
cutest thing I've ever seen in my life. You canonize that, Yeah,
well that image alone.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
You know, the United States military can certainly weaponize things
of that nature, but they have other ways of doing
this too. There's this thing called the US War Dogs Association,
and they've kind of given us some basic categories in
which are types in which dogs have been used for
military purposes right over the years.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Maybe not necessarily today, but yeah, they have seven broad
categories and we can list through these pretty quickly. So
first century, it's what it says on the tin. These
dogs worked on a short leash and they were taught
to give a series of escalating warnings. They could growl,
they could run around like they were irritated, or of
(07:46):
course they could bark, and they were most useful during
the evening when attacked from cover or from the rear
was most likely.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yeah, and that feels like the most traditional use of
a dog for almost guarding purposes in a way, you
know to the days of wolves. Yeah, if you're around
a campfire or something, having a dog that is tame
and near your campsite, it would be very, very beneficial.
But then you've also got dogs that are actually going
to go out on patrol or scout with humans, and
(08:20):
a lot of these are trained to work in silence.
These would these guys would try and detect or at
least attempt to detect snipers, any kind of other ambushes
from you know, an enemy force. But especially if you're
dealing with something that you've got not a quarantined area
but an area of operation, right, these could kind of
patrol the area as well. But a type of dog
(08:43):
needs to be trained for this. You can't just get
any breed essentially, or any dog with any disposition for this.
They have to be some of the most highly intelligent breeds.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
German shepherds a lot of the time, right, or at
least those are attack dogs. They're definitely used as they
seem pretty versatile because they're very highly intelligent and trainable.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
I imagine you just don't want a Golden Retriever for
this one. Yeah no, because they would make friends.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yeah. Well, it's crazy too. They've got a statistic here,
and again we're getting this from the US War Dogs Association.
Quote scout dogs could detect the presence of enemies up
to distances of one thousand yards and that's way before
any of the human operators would notice these enemy forces.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
And just FYI, this is an interesting statistic that I
found from how stuff works. Actually, the cost of training
a military dog per animal is around between twenty thousand
to forty thousand dollars. So this is very specialized training
that goes into being able to do these tasks and
doesn't come cheap.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
So the third category there would be the messenger. The
most desired quality for a messenger dog was loyalty and
they had to be able to work with two handlers.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Like one on each side.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah yeah, and so that can be a problem with
some animals. When the militaries of the world attempted to
train cetaceans, they found that they had difficulty passing like
take getting the dolphin or what have you. To also
be cool, with the field agent instead of just being
cool with the trainer. But then we have mind detection.
Those dogs have a cool nickname. They're called M dogs.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I feel like I've met an M dog somewhere, but
it was probably at a dive bar.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
For some reason, all of this is reminding me of
Metal Gear Solid and the Diamond Dogs. I don't know
if you guys are aware of that.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Nope, Okay, well it's been a while since I played
the Metal Gears.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
The Diamond Dogs. Yeah, that's a David Bowie reference right there.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
It is, that's correct. Oh, should never mind. There are
lots of there's a lot of games that you need
to play, all right, keep going.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
So then there are casualty dogs. This is a more
somber duty, but this is enormously important. They're like search
and rescue dogs, but they're meant to find the bodies, yeah,
you know, with the is not if the rescue is
not possible while the person's alive. They are meant to
(11:06):
pinpoint the casualties.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Right now, Can we jump back to the mind dogs
really faster?
Speaker 1 (11:10):
I feel I'm always open to talk about M dogs, man.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Okay, because I feel like I've been glossed over some
of the end part there because there's something you found
in the research bend that was just about how difficult
that job is. Because remember, these animals are essentially performing
a job, the job of detecting minds and other metallic
and non metallic explosive devices, while there's let's say a
(11:35):
gun battle occurring or explosions happening around. Just how difficult
that job is to perform in actual combat.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Oh yeah, yeah, very stressful, right, yeah, yeah, So the
m dogs, despite having one of the coolest names, did
not in fact do the best job just because the
circumstances were so fraught with peril.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
The one I admire immensely were the tunnel dogs oh Vietnam,
because they used to have humans as well be tunnel
rats who would drop into the secret Viet Cong tunnels
hideouts and headquarters, and that just I don't know why
that one was when that's terrified me, Like if you've
(12:20):
ever been buried alive, it's not a pleasant experience that
like you wouldn't I'm not normally claustrophobic, but it just
takes like one night in the dirt to not want
to ever do that again.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Have you seen that whole movie where I think it's Ryan,
the guy that plays Deadpool. It's like the whole movie
is him and buried, a live situation. Ryan Reynolds said
his name was that Deadpool's name?
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah, yes it is. But I do not recall this film.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
It's called buried. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it's called Buried.
Sounds like a very unpleasant film. I don't know that
Ben would enjoy it very much. I always think of
that scene in kill Bill when she's buried in the
coffin and clong her way out, and that was to
me the most visceral depiction of like what it might
feel like to be buried alive, and it is. It
is not good.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Yeah, to totally I agree with you there, but I'm sorry.
All this stuff makes me think about Docsin's and I
don't know, honestly, I don't know if.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
They were they were bread to hunt badgers.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Yeah, but I know that. I don't know if they
were used in for the purposes specifically of being a
tunnel dog. But dang, that's like you couldn't create a
better version, a better chassis.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, you could have put their legs a little closer together.
Probably made a little more traction.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
They're bread to hunt all burrowing animals that were in
need of that position. That's why, despite their diminutive frame,
they have a warlike belligerent demeanor.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, I said it.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
It's true.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
It's true. It's very true.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Ben. Back back to casualty dogs, it makes me think
of rescue dogs, not not in that what we think
of when we think of like getting a rescue shelter dog,
but like dogs that would rescue people from avalanches. You
might have seen cartoons where you have these Saint Bernards
in like Switzerland, the Swiss Alps, with these little barrels
around their neck that I think had some sort of
brandy in them that would revive like a passed out,
(14:07):
snowblind traveler and poor sap that got stuck in an avalanche.
Oh the thing as well.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I always wondered if if they really did wear those
and oh, I just I just found a picture. I
mean it definitely, that's a thing I found. Yeah, I
found a picture for petful dot com. What's in a
barrel around a Saint Bridard's neck? But it seems like
there's a long and disputed history, but they definitely at
some point at least one of them did it. Tunnel dogs,
(14:34):
I think, incredibly brave explosive detection dogs, right, that is
the That is the seventh category you'll see on war dogs,
and those are just what they sound like. They are
trained to use the astonishing canine scent of smell to
detect explosives before human beings could. So these these dogs
(14:56):
are in Rock, Afghanistan, a lot of other war torn areas,
and that only factors in these seven categories only factor
in official working dogs. So these are not those heartwarming,
buzzfeedy stories of you know, like Sergeant Peppercorns or whatever,
who is a little you know, cocker Spaniel that the
(15:17):
French ran into one day and now he has his
own uniform and people have to salute him and stuff.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Oh Sergeant pepper Corns.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
It just I don't know, is trying to get something
besides Sergeant Pepper. You know.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
It's beautiful all those.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Different you know, Peter Nincompoop or something for all the
always sunny fans there. But those poochas are inarguably crucial
in their own very endearing, very sweet way. But that
is not why we are here today, is it. No?
Speaker 2 (15:47):
But really quick the Saint Bernard neck barrel not a
real thing. It was an invention of a painter and
then it just sort of caught the public's imagination. So
apparently not a real thing. But Saint Bernard's wore bred
in that area of the Swiss Alps where people were
They were used as rescue dogs in that way, but
did not have the barrel.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Well, now we know Saint Bernard's no barrel, no bar
But the reason the other things we are talking about
today are the way animals have been used right for
wartime and other things. And we've got a couple examples
that will laundry list here a little bit, but some
are a little more strange than others. Did you guys
do an episode of Ridiculous history on the bats? The
(16:27):
explosive bat idea.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
We've done an episode on a few of these. Actually
there was another one involving dolphins. But let's start with
the bats for sure.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Because they were incendiary, right, that was the whole point.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yeah, So the US almost used bats loaded with napalm
and something they call Project X ray.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
The idea here was that.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
It would create a wave of fires throughout Japan conflagration
that would destroy the primary cities. However, the plan was scrapped,
not because the bats were bad at their jobs, but
because they were very good and they escaped. They burned
down a hangar in New Mexico, a military officials car,
(17:07):
and everyone was against it.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
If I'm remembering correctly. They were just on timers as well,
so it wasn't like they could be triggered individually in
some remote way. They were released, and the ideas that
they would they would kind of roost in the eaves
of these very flammable homes as you know, like a
lot of Japanese homes, paper doors and you know, all
wooden frames, and the idea was smart. Uh, they would
(17:30):
be undetectable. People wouldn't think anything of it, and it
just didn't didn't go as planned, but it was a
pretty smart idea.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
And so so they had just like like a bomb
essentially attached to them, and it would just.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Carry unsteerable uh yeah, untrainable.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Grenade rules you pull the pin and you throw, you know, but.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
In this case a million bats. Yeah, because it was
a ton, right, it wasn't just a couple. It was like, wow,
that's insane.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
And then on the flip side. The Japanese did a
weird similar thing, not involving animals, but involving balloons that
they would just like release and hopefully the winds would
take them into North America. And a few of them
made it, but mainly they did not. But this idea
of just like blindly releasing weaponry into the world is
(18:18):
very strange to me and dangerous.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I mean, this is so back to animals. The camels
have been used as mount some beast of burdens since
time immemorial, but they were actually used as quote unquote
suicide bombers during the Soviet War in Afghanistan. And the
problem with that terminology, of course, is that the camels
could not consent. Yeah, it's still the very medieval or
(18:41):
ancient practice of like lighting pigs on fire and then
sending them to run at the enemy.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
And just remember that Soviet war in Afghanistan. It's not
the whole two thousand and one and beyond war that's
back in the day seventy nine to eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yes, that is correct and very good point there. Dolphins
super intelligent, of course, It's no wonder militaries all around
the world would love to work with dolphins. They're great
at locating mines, they're trainable, they have some behavioral issues.
Real dolphin behavior does not match maybe what you think
(19:15):
of when you think of Flipper or Echo. The dolphin
I think was the Sega Genesis game.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
That game was hard.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yeah, but Ben, I have also seen that episode of
Drunk History.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Trust you're talking about that.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
You're talking about the we're adults here, you're talking about
the dolphin hand.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
A true story.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
So with with with Lily, with like the researcher, Yeah, yeah, the.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
LS Lily language language instruction.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
There are some freaky dolphin action going on in like
a flooded laboratory, like dormitory kind of situation. Right, Yeah,
that's for another day.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
So, along with dolphins, the US Marine Mammal Program also
trains sea lions to detect enemy divers sea lionel spotted diver,
and they're supposed to attach a tracking device shaped like
a handcuff to one of the enemy's limbs.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Whoa.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
They're also trained to locate and recover military hardware and
crash victims at sea. The US is very careful to
state that these cetaceans, you know, the dolph, well, these
cetaceans and the sea lions and so on are not
taught to attack people. Yeah, that's what they say.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
They just want to put a little handcuff like thing
on your leg, that's all, a little anklet, just a
little tag, just want to access arise.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
So again there's there's some murkiness around there, and it's
not just due to the depth of the ocean. Will
will figure out exactly what's going on there or for
some disturbing things in that regard. But going back to
the idea of blindly releasing something, one of the most
dangerous uses of animals in warfare would be the use
of insects because that ties directly with germ warfare and
(20:57):
the spread of weaponized disease.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Yes, there's an historical use of this in Japan when
that country attempted to use insects as weapons during World
War two, and the whole idea there was to infect
the you know, military members and people in front lines
and people in all places, a lot of places with
cholera and plague that would be carried by these insects. Essentially,
(21:22):
like you said, ben as germ warfare, they're just carriers
for these things.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Oh and little known fact. Counter fact to this is
the US tested very similar methods on its own people
like in Florida, very poor black neighborhoods. In Savannah, Georgia,
it dropped these flea bombs and it was like, you know,
that's very swampy kind of area with a lot of
potential for disease and it was really bad. What do
(21:50):
we find ben that people actually did were confirmed killed
because of some of those tests.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
I believe that's correct.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
In Japan also did this as well, Like we were
talking about the same thing, dropping fleas of like inside
bombs essentially. That's that is very very intense to me.
It's ingenious. But I mean is what do you call?
Is it biological warfare?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yes, it must be right, absolutely, and it's a real
scorched earth approach too. I mean it's it's really just devious.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, because there's not a when those things are deployed
there there wasn't any technology in form of like a
topical treatment or something applied to friendly forces or in
terms of course, you can't steer the bugs once they're loose.
So yeah, this is brutal, it's insidious. Let's go to something.
It's a bit of a lighter note before we plunge
(22:45):
full on into the darkness. But let's do that after
a word from our sponsor. All right, we're back. No,
you'll love this one. Birds have also been used in
war fair. Trained parrots were positioned on the Eiffel Tower
during World War One. This is kind of hilarious. It's
(23:06):
low key hilarious. The parrots were trained to alert people
to incoming enemy aircraft. However, the parrots could not differentiate
between enemy aircraft and Allied planes, so they were just
losing their frickin minds repeatedly. This is very stressful to
the humans working with them, so the birds had to
(23:28):
get mixed. In the Second World War, an American behaviorists,
the famous BF Skinner, devised a plan to train pigeons
to ride in missiles and guide them to enemy ships.
The plan was scrapped for a while, but then resurrected
from nineteen forty eight to fifty three as Project or.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Con Isn't that an amazing image that gets conjured in
your brain? A pigeon piloting a missile? Nope, or a bomb? Yeah,
don't care for it.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
It's like Doctor Strangelove. But now it's a pigeon with
the hat.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Yeah, and the bombs are coming down. The parrots are
like German aircraft.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Don't like it one bit, so.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Nolan, in the interest of your sanity, we'll move on
there too. We are just scratching the surface here. While
the initial idea may seem unorthodox, the logic does bear up.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Oh I like that it, she bears up.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Oh ah man, all right, you got me on that
on fair and square. First, some animals do naturally have
abilities superior to those of humans. Technology has done a
lot to mitigate this gap in recent years, but in
some cases animals still remain the superior, most cost effective solution.
(24:43):
The nose of a dog is amazing, right, it's tough
to replace that.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
And second, now this is cold blooded, a lot more
so than we like to be here. But it's true
if something goes wrong with an operative, if it is
an animal and not a human being, it's a lot
less expensive to train another one of those animals than
(25:08):
it is to train a soldier. Now, that is that
is pretty rough to look at it just from a
war cost perspective in that way, but it's also the
pr effect of having a lost soldier versus a you know,
perhaps a lost dog. It's it's different.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Let's just do lost bird. Okay, we can all stomach that.
I'm not a lost dog. Makes me sad. Lost bird,
I'm like better off without him.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
The birds, I like, don't get lost. They're too smart.
The corve the corvets.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
That's I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
I think every every living creature could get lost. But yeah,
that's a that's a good point, right. So it's no
wonder that animals continue and will continue to fill various
rules in multiple militaries. But just how far does this go?
And what if there is more to the story. Here's
where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, depending on who you ask, intelligence agencies and militaries
all across the globe are using animals in a much
more nefarious and secretive, clandestine ways. So let's talk a
little bit ben about the Middle East and its strange
preoccupation with animal conspiracies.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Oh, this is crazy, Yeah this, Let's spend some time
on this, and we have to be pretty careful going
into this. We and all our fellow listeners need to
realize that this bizarre, distinct subgenre all a different, larger
conspiracy theory does occur. As you said NOL in the
Middle East, and it is wrapped up in I would
(26:43):
say more than its fair share of anti Semitism, because
we have numerous sources in the Middle East claiming that
animals are being used in top secret programs to surveil
local populations, terrorize them, and attack them. However, the majority,
by which I mean close to one hundred percent of
these accusations are coming from other countries in the Middle East,
(27:08):
directly leveled at a single other country, which is Israel
and occasionally the West quote unquote the West.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Can we talk about the eagle that got detained, Yeah, yeah,
the heel or a Hesbelo affiliated TV stations is according
to a report by Slate, they were saying that an
eagle was detained north of Beirut because it was suspected
of being an Israeli spy.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yep, there are multiple things. We can even trace it
back to the one of the beginning reports that made
international news let's call it the.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Great Shark Wave of twenty ten ten ten, is.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
That like a Sharknado, it's like a shark NATO plus
a It's like a shark Nado plus one of those
monster truck rallies plus jaws. Yeah, that's pretty accurate. It
sounds cool, right, unless you're one of the people who
gets wrapped up in the shark wave. In December twenty ten,
there were several shark attacks off the coast of Egypt
(28:10):
near some resort towns, and people appeared on the Egyptian media,
notably one guy named Captain Mustaf Ismail, and this captain
claimed that a GPS tracking device found in one of
the sharks was not your garden variety GPS. These GPS
trackers are not uncommon in the world of terrestrial biology
(28:30):
or marine biology. But the captain said that this was
instead of a GPS device, this was a steering device.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
It was a.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Guiding device planted by what he described as agents of
Israeli intelligence. Egyptian officials attributed the attacks to more mundane
factors like the actual politicians and the intelligence community of Egypt. Said, well,
you know, sharks normally aren't super into eating peas people,
(29:00):
so we're looking at over fishing, We're looking at maybe
teaching them to associate people with food, dumping sheep carcasses overboard,
even unusually high water temperatures. Through their credit, Egyptian scientists
also weren't buying it because you see, GPS is not
a remote control. But here the conspiracy match was lit,
(29:23):
and it once that match was lit, the story itself
became what people nowadays call lit af Because we have
several more stories of these strange accusations, they just get weirder.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Okay, So let's go to the Iranian military advisor Hassan
Feruza body in twenty eighteen, when asked about some environmentalists
who were under arrest at the time, this military advisor
said that they weren't your average environment lovers, your average
tree huggers. Instead, they were representatives of Western powers hiding
(30:00):
spy lizards in uranium minds. I remember this story very,
very distinctly. This is fantastic. He claimed that the environmentalists
had lizards and chameleons on their persons at the time,
and for Uzibaldi told the Iranian Labor News Agency quote,
we found out that their skin attracts atomic waves and
that they were nuclear spies who wanted to find out
(30:23):
where inside the Islamic Republic of Iran we have uranium
minds and where we are engaged in atomic activities. Now
there are some issues with this.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, Yeah, First, atomic waves are not a real thing.
It is true that in many cases it can be
illegal to be caught with living creatures in your possession,
especially if you are smuggling them in or out of
a country. But unless it's an endangered species, it's a
weird thing to charge someone with. Next, the scales that
(30:55):
cover lizards are called skewts. It's neat right sc es.
And these scoots are made up of two types of
keratin proteins, keratin A and, in a stunning plot twist,
keratin B. Neither of these types of protein have any
special ability to detect uranium or other radioactive materials. Furthermore,
(31:19):
reptiles are cold blooded, so they want to be where
it is warmer. Right. Often it's a tough cell to
say that there are cold blood reptiles who have some
sort of motivation to burrow deep into a cold uranium mine.
So overwhelmingly people outside of Iran and outside of Firozibaldi
(31:40):
say this is hotwash.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
See, the lizards were meant to seek out the warmth
of the neutrons coming off of the radioactive materials. Guys,
that's the whole point, right, that's the whole point. You
release a chameleon in a very cold cave, It's going
to go directly to the uranium. It's not rocket science.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
It's size.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Being facetious, of course, But what an interesting concept. Uh yeah,
because what do you do with them? What do you
do with the lizards after they've found the uranium?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
What of them?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Give you some crickets? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (32:18):
What's the intelligence part? What's the actionable thing?
Speaker 1 (32:22):
I guess it could pinpoint the location of the mind
would be the idea. So it would have to be
a numbers game. Then you would either drop them into
suspected minds, right, or you would drop them into everything
in a region and just hope that one of them
seemed to seem to prove the supposition. Okay, all right,
(32:43):
well what about this? If lizards feel a little too
beyond the pale, how about something more reasonable like squirrels.
Also in Iran, in two thousand and seven, right.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, Iran and people working for Iran
captured fourteen squirrels in the local news agency there said
that these little guys were equipped with some kind of
equipment that was meant for spying, and allegedly the squirrels
had some kind of you know, like a small device
attached to them essentially that was used for eavesdropping. So
(33:14):
you would just put them in a park somewhere or
maybe near a government building, and you could just wait
for the squirrels to capture whatever conversations occurring at a
park bench.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
And honestly, that's become sort of a trope, a cliche
of this idea of the squirrels are listening, you know
what I mean, Like you see it in in sketch. Kay,
that's exactly right. It was Brick and Morning, Rick and Morty.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yes, it was Rick and Morty. They traveled to an
alternate universe where Mordy is able to hear squirrels and
they have to burned out. They basically burned down the
universe to escape, right.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Yeah. Yeah, but the conversations the squirrels have are so
clandestine and beautiful. So good.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, it is really good. I en missed that episode.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Can we talk about the fact that we're gonna be
on Harmontown. You guys we talked to on social media
when we talked about I'm really excited about it. It's
really cool because we're big fans of Dan and we're
gonna be on Normantown.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
And Dan's gonna be on this show too, assuming we
don't just irreparably burn our bridges yet we're on Harmontown.
We're all dan Is still friends with us, We're all
still friends with him. Who knows, Maybe we'll get rowed
out on a rail, tired and feathered, hopefully not hopefully
not hopefully not so Okay, maybe the idea of squirrel
spies seems a little too far into the realm of
(34:30):
science fiction. That's fine. I got a different pitch for you.
How about dolphins. They're super intelligent and in twenty fifteen,
Hamas claimed that they arrested a dolphin that was spying
for Israeli forces. What I love about this is when
you just hear that headline. I have this picture of
a grizzled dolphin that can somehow walk, yeah, and it's
(34:52):
got its flippers, and it's got sunglasses on for some reason,
and it's being walked out past the cameras.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
They got me. What do the dolphins sounds sound like?
I don't know. That's not pretty good.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
It's hard to get high enough the dolphins.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
It I thought it was pretty good. I appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
So the Times of Israel reported allegations that this dolphin
was outfitted with spying equipment, including but not limited to cameras.
Which interesting about that is that we know stuff like
that has happened before, right in real life. Now, this
next one is something that I think is safe to
say none of us saw coming. There's a very specific
(35:46):
sort of narrative thread with animal spy allegations concerning vultures.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Massive, massive, disgusting, creepy, gangly dangly red face weirdo creepy vultures. Yes,
from Lebanon. In twenty sixteen, Lebanon security officials detained a
huge vulture as described previously by myself with the six
point five foot wingspan this is making me cringe inside,
(36:14):
and claimed that it was a surveillance vulture, an animal
working for Israel, because there was apparently a tracking device
attached to one of its creepy vulture.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Feet, which means, I mean, come on, that's the thing, Okay,
So I had this tracking device attached to its foot.
Yet again, a GPS transmitter is not some sort of
magic remote control gizmo. Tel Aviv University was tracking this bird.
And in addition, this is the weird part. In addition
to having a GPS transmitter on the bird, the bird
(36:46):
also had tags on its wings, along with an engraved
metal ring on its leg that read Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Not super secret. That's not good spycraft. It's not as
crappy a job as James Bond, who always like is
eternally day drunk and tells people his name right and.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
What he does.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah, that guy's a mess. But this bird wasn't much
better if it was supposed to be a spy. This
is not the first time Griffin vulture, specifically because these
are massive, right, it's not the first time one of
them has been accused to be an agent of massade
of the Israeli intelligence Agency. In Saudi Arabia in twenty
(37:31):
and eleven, one was captured, and of course local news
and scuttle but began to orbit intensely around this concept
of a quote unquote Zionist plot, and then pretty much
the same thing occurred in Sudan in twenty twelve. Around
this part of the world, many people were certain that
there was a new type of superspy and it was
(37:52):
not a human, it was not a robot. It was
a buzzard, which is strange because, again, from everything we
can tell, these birds were likely being tracked as part
of some biodiversity conservation project.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Yes, it was for beneficial means for both the birds
and for our research. Uh at least that's that's on
the face of it, right. Maybe, Look, we can't fully
discount that some of these animals weren't spying for somebody, right, sure,
because we'll never know. We never got to interrogate these birds.
That vulture. You never got to put it down a
(38:26):
room with a polygraph nol.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
And as far as I know, we have no Doctor
Doolittle esque figure on our in our governments. You know,
that's all we need, you guys.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
Yeah, that'd be pretty cool for counterintelligence. So doctor Doolittle,
I mean, surely.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
There there's I don't know, is there. No, there's no
kind of like there isn't there a way to communicate
with dolphins that I make that up. I made.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
We talked about it. It was the whole hand thing.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
No, I mean yeah, but I mean, like you know,
with your mind, man, come on some kind of helmet,
you know, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
I feel like that's also a rick and Morty thing.
But I'm just seeing image.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
There's the intelligence. There's lawnmower man flowers for Algernon esque thing.
Yeah with the dogs, Okay, and I thought that was
a good one too. So we also see other birds.
In twenty thirteen, Turkish officials claimed they captured a kestrel
falcon spying for you guessed it, the state of Israel.
(39:20):
There's a great illustration of this alleged culprit over at
tabletmag dot com. Like the other birds, this kestrel has
a bunch of markers identifying it as a research subject,
and people are thought to be researching migratory patterns. The
problem is that the very signs that should have made
it plain these birds were part of various studies were
(39:44):
instead taken as evidence of spycraft. And then the very
next year, fishermen in Egypt suspected a stork of being
the next James Bond. So far, so far, astute listeners
will notice the trends here we mentioned at the top
the country's claiming the conspiracies of foot in the Middle
(40:04):
East almost universally accuse one country of creating these animal spies.
So it is doubtlessly true that anti Semitism is informing
some of these claims. If it is possible to bracket
that racism and that discrimination and just look at the facts.
Could any of these claims about animals as spycraft and
(40:29):
animals and war, could any of them be true? We'll
tackle that after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
All right, we're back.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
So if we just look at the trends, the claims
of birds being used for spying often seem to be
cases of birds that were being tracked for science rather
than some sort of intelligence agency. Allegations of squirrels to
date remain unproven.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
And if you know anything about what the squirrels are
doing or talking about, please write to us right now.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Or run be safe. You can only save yourself.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
It's too late. It's too late.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
If you nodded, they heard you. It's true that there's
no solid proof for against the squirrel thing. Yet, however,
there are a couple of former CIA agents and wildlife
experts who are very skeptical about this because they think
it would be very difficult to train a squirrel or.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Yeah, and if you could, you would have a trained squirrel,
and not a squirrel that appears to be just your
run of the mill guy out there collecting food.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
And this all leads mainstream writers to dismiss a lot
of the wilder conspiratorial accusations. Writing for the Toronto Star,
journalist Gil Jarren says, many animals undoubtedly serve in Israel's
army and security services. Dogs sniff out bombs, I'll paka
help mountaineers carry their loads, which I do not know
(42:00):
and is true and is cool. But tales about the
use of sharks, birds, rodents, or, as it has also
been claimed, insects and the service of the military are
more the fruit of imagination than hard facts. So with
that in mind, let's go to the facts, the crazy,
strange facts. The United States is continuing to work with
underwater creatures, evaluating their usefulness as spies. Remember we talked
(42:25):
about that twenty ten sharkwave accusation right off the coast
of Egypt. It turns out that back in two thousand
and six, the Pentagon looked into using cybernetic sharks as spies,
and in twenty nineteen the BBC reported on it.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
It sounds not real. Yes, I've just got to couch
that if none of this sounds real until you see
it on the BBC website based off of a declassified document.
So I'm going to read part of this. The latest
project from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects DARPA. As
you know, we're big fans of darpover.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Sound cue at this point.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Really. So they aim to improve military intelligence by using
a range of aquatic creatures from large fish to humble
single celled organisms, and they're using them all as underwater
warning systems.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
And here's a quote. We're trying to understand what these
organisms can tell us about the presence and movements of
all kinds of underwater vehicles in the ocean. That's from
doctor Lori odor Nato, who's the program manager of the
Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors or PALS project. I love my
underwater pals.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
Yeah. Well, of course the Navy comes through and they're saying, look, look, guys,
we've said this before in the past. We're gonna say
it again. We are not trying to use any creatures
of the sea to do any kind of aquaman stuff.
We're not trying to have them harm the water craft,
the ships and stuff. We're to hurt the humans that
(43:54):
are out there. We're just using them as sensors.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Do you believe that.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
No gonna, Why would you not train it? I guess
it would be much more difficult to train a cetacean
to attack a specific person a specific uniforms.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
You remember faces, Oh, like an.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Assassin, So targeting a single person rather than a a
I mean a generic type of soldier or military person.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Maybe there's some signal that you have to give to
prove your friendly. But also, I'm very taken annul a
video games amount. I'm very taken with the idea of
a dolphin centric assassin's creed franchise.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
You know what I want is a cephalopod centric assassin organization. Really,
I mean think about it. They're like super smart. They
can like open doors and stuff. Didn't you see I
find a NEMO too. They only live two years though
that's a bummer.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
That's part of what And they're the closest thing we
have to approve an alien intelligence.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Okay, so fix the aging problem right the walk on
the lens?
Speaker 2 (44:57):
I remember, you just put them in a mech situation.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I wrote a great sci fi story about Did I
ever send you that?
Speaker 3 (45:02):
No?
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Oh man, it's a trip. But let's not lose that
piece of the story. Maybe there were not any remote
controlled cybernetic shark drones, which again sounds insane off the
coast of Egypt, but the United States certainly wanted or
wants to make them, or.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
Did, and it's just not it's still classified.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
The project was discussed that the two thousand and six
Ocean Sciences Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Honolulu, Hawaii.
There wasn't a lot of news about the proposal after that,
and you know, if it was just in the proposal
stage at that time, it doesn't feel like a few
months would be enough time to get something like that
(45:43):
in the field, right, certainly if that was their starting position.
And we can't forget that. People in Norway did find
a runaway whale spy who is very friendly, very acclimated
to humans.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
Yes, and you can read about that on the BBC.
There are several Again, the BBC has some amazing reporting
on spy animals.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
Yeah, there must be someone in there. It's like their thing.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Yeah, because it really was a beluga whale, right, that's
this is the one we're referencing that had a harness
on it that specifically was let me see if I
can find exactly what it said yes, it had a
harness on it that was supposedly Russian or of Russian origin,
and it also had a go pro holder like one
(46:32):
of those little, you know, the mounts for a GoPro,
But there was no go pro attached on this beluga
whale that was found. It's certainly odd. But again, when
people spoke about it, or the officials, the Russian officials
when they chimed in, they were basically saying, come on, guys,
you think we would put one of our specially trained
(46:54):
spy belugas out there with a harness they clearly is
Russian by Beluka.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Oh yeah, which goes back to the birth thing, like, yeah,
if it's a spy, why does it say Tel Aviv University?
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
But it's also like one of those tropes you see
in like sci fi moves or one of like a
satellite falls and people like, it's clearly a Russian satellite
because it's got Russian text on it, Like would they
really do that? Maybe they would, I don't know, yeah,
you know.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Especially the question is did they intend to get caught?
Who did they want to identify this?
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Well, here's the crazy thing. It is, at least according
to this reporting. There was a colleague of the Russian
official who would comment in saying, you know this is crazy.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Come on.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Of course it wasn't this, but they were saying they
don't do such experiments with Belugas specifically to have them spy,
but they have. The Russian military has been capturing and
training Belugas for quite some time. So again it's like
the shark thing, like if you go back four years,
then you go, oh, wait, there are some programs that
seem pretty similar to this.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Right, so maybe the maybe the accusations are sort of
urban legends, right, maybe they're they're growing from these legitimate concerns.
But at this point it is no secret that militaries
and intelligence agencies do very, very creepy things, and furthermore,
tail as old as time. When people are prejudiced against
(48:14):
a giving group, it's not hard for them to accept
even the most ridiculous accusation. If you, for some reason
hate a person or a people or a group of
any sort, then your BS detection, your BS meter is
all out of whack. You'll believe anything. If you hate
everyone who watches Night Court, then you see a study
(48:38):
that says people who watch Night Court are you know,
necrophiliacs or something. You'll just sort of nod to yourself
and go, that makes sense, checks out.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
Yeah, you know that whoever that person is that hates
people who like who watch Night Court, there's something very
wrong with them. And that is the only kind of
person that I hate is people who hate people who
watch night Din.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
The guy from Night Court just pass away, Harry Anderson, Yeah,
he deeps, that's the way. Last year, at the age
of sixty five.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
I read a study mat that people who hate people
who hate Night Court actually tend to perform higher on
spatial aptitude tests. Do you believe that I did?
Speaker 3 (49:13):
You just find that somewhere?
Speaker 1 (49:15):
I found it somewhere.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
Sure, so you used your aptitude to find it.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Good work.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
So again, however, despite the fact that we cannot we
cannot like extract the socio political soil in which this occurs.
We cannot extract that racism. It is true despite that
that there are clear improving cases of animals being used
(49:43):
in ways that are, like you said, Matt, similar to
the more conspiratorial claims we see floating around. We cannot
confirm whether the specifics of a certain narrative are true.
You know, like twenty ten off the coast of Egypt,
there were cyber sharks. But we can point out a
couple of things in the news just a few days ago.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
That, yeah, just happened really fast before you even get
into this. But there's some weird serendipity occurring with this
show right now, and we won't go into all of it.
But Ben and I were going to record this episode
last week. Uh huh. Noel wasn't gonna be able to
be here, and something came up in my personal life
where we weren't We were not able to record this thing.
(50:26):
Then over the weekend there was reporting specifically about this thing,
which blew my mind right.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Yes, according to the BBC, in an artcle released just
a few days before we recorded this, the CIA finally
admitted it used pigeons to spy on Soviet forces in
an operation nicknamed or code named rather Takana and Operation
to Kana. Fit these pigeons with these incredibly endearing tiny
(50:56):
cameras right.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
On the breast area, facing down a little.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Bit right, so as the pigeon is flying, the camera
would automatically take photos of whatever was within line a site.
They didn't stop there Takana also trained ravens to deliver
and retrieve objects up to forty grams from windowsills of
otherwise inaccessible buildings.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
And let's just go really fast into the Takana pigeons
with those cameras. It's something so fascinating. So let's imagine that.
I mean, it's the way. It's the way carrier pigeons
would work. Back in the day. Pigeons would be taken
from place A with wherever you're going, Right, if you
were going to be in a caravan going somewhere, you're
(51:38):
going to another encampment somewhere, Yeah, you'd carry a pigeon
that had the home of A. You go to place B.
You release that pigeon at B with a message. It
carries it back to its home in A. Right, So
they would do something very similar where they would train
the pigeon to have a home in place A. Then essentially,
if imagine drawing a straight line to play B and
(52:01):
in between those two places would be let's say a
Russian facility or Soviet facility back in the during the
Cold War, in between directly in between those two places,
and they would release them from Place B. It would
fly over this facility, take a ton of pictures and
again you'd release probably multiple or several of them, take
(52:21):
a ton of pictures as it's going back to its home,
capture the stuff. It was a brilliant plan and they
were actually doing it.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
What's the mechanism for taking the pictures?
Speaker 3 (52:30):
It's that little camera we were talking about this.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
Remotely like they're actually timing.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Yeah, yes, kind of old school exactly. So if they
fly over something that is not worth photographing, they're still
going to get a bunch of shots, right. Uh.
Speaker 3 (52:46):
They also had and those ravens that you were talking
Oh yeah, oh.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
Man, So okay.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
They used a flashing red laser beam to mark a
target and a special lamp was used to sort of
train the bird to come back. According to the BBC article,
on at least one occasion in Europe, the CIA delivered
an eavesdropping device by bird via this raven mechanism to
a window, although there was no audio picked up from
(53:14):
the target, so they got the bird to do it.
It's just no one talked about anything important in the
room where it happened. So the CIA also looked at
whether migratory birds could be used to detect chemical weapons.
There were some sort there's they like allude to trials
where there was some kind of electric brain stimulation to
(53:36):
guide dogs remotely, and there was a project to put
listening devices into a cat. This stuff got ugly real quick.
But I did want to end on a lighter note.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
And I hope this is this lighter are you going
to talk about?
Speaker 2 (53:50):
This is lighter.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
No tricks, no tricks, no tricks. There is an incredibly
adorable thing that we'll call the audio dossier, the Otter dossier.
Speaker 3 (54:02):
Okay, I don't know this, Uh it is.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
It reads like a book report.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
It's called a dossier on Lutra the Otter, and it uh,
this came out of a Freedom of Information Act request. Uh.
This reads kind of like a book report by someone
working in the intelligence agencies from Uncle Sam who just
really loves otters and is trying to find a reason
for people to use them in experiments. Lutra the Otter
(54:28):
is a compact, powerful, intelligent animal capable of negotiating land, water,
and obstacles with great facility. And it goes on to
talk about how much this person, this anonymous author loves otters.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
OW.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
You can read it on you can read it online
for free too. It's one of the more pleasant things
in the vault.
Speaker 3 (54:48):
Yeah, Geo Cities dot FBI. It's like otter fan fiction.
Speaker 1 (54:52):
It's like fiction that's very well put.
Speaker 3 (54:54):
Yeah, I really thought you were going to jump straight
to Acoustic Kitty.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Acoustic Kitty is the hair tail. That's the one where
they installed an implant into the kitty's brain. Basically, right, yes,
very inhumane, bad times.
Speaker 3 (55:09):
And well, well there were listening devices inside the cat,
or that was that was at least the plan, right
to release a bunch of these cats with listening devices
physically inside them.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (55:20):
But then they tested it one time the and the
kiddy cat that they put it in immediately jumped out
into the road and got smashed by a car. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
The lutra usually sleeps on its head with its arms folded,
and it likes to sleep with humans.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Paid someone and it has a cut of tummy.
Speaker 1 (55:41):
It's all but that man, seriously, and then they say, never,
if possible, confine or leaveing a zoo or kennel an
otter which has enjoyed any human companionship or freedom.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
Well, there you go.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
This person just was an otter buddy.
Speaker 3 (55:56):
Ah wow uh the basic.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
That you know, I'm gonna stop reading sections of this report.
If you ever feel down, go check out Adosia on Lutra,
and do please let us know what you think about
these allegations of animal spies. What we're finding is that
while the timeline for a lot of this stuff may
not match up, the pure potential of the technology is
(56:24):
there in some cases.
Speaker 2 (56:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (56:26):
Well, yeah, and there's now an historical declassified trail of
the CIA using animals for these means exactly pretty closely
to what's being you know, suspected in a lot of places.
It doesn't mean it's true, especially the later ones. And
like you said, Ben, you can't divorce some of those
feelings that occur in regions with the reality. It's tough
(56:49):
to do that.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yeah, absolutely, And that's why we want to hear from you.
Let us know what you think about this. Do you
think there is any sand to these claims. Furthermore, if
you had to pick an animal that would cooperate with
you and an aspir ring, what kind of animal would
you pick him? Why?
Speaker 2 (57:08):
You can let us know.
Speaker 3 (57:09):
Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure at least a few
of us took honey badgers, right.
Speaker 2 (57:13):
I'm absolutely going to be an otter at this point.
Speaker 3 (57:17):
All right, what about you, met? I mean I would say,
Honey Badger, if I could have a friend, Honey Badger,
that would be on my team and do stuff.
Speaker 2 (57:25):
I wouldn't be on your team because he doesn't give
a well, that's.
Speaker 3 (57:28):
The whole point. Though, he wouldn't. He wouldn't g a
F for anything but me.
Speaker 2 (57:35):
I don't think he would g a F about you.
Speaker 3 (57:37):
No, he would. He would be my boy.
Speaker 1 (57:38):
Okay, okay, So we would have to do this podcast
with an animal that may well attack and eviscerate us,
and the only thing keeping it in line is that
it adores you.
Speaker 3 (57:52):
Yeah, I'd be like, yo, stop man, it goes for
the giblets first.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
I mean, you know, and that's our classic episode for
this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (58:07):
That's right, let us know what you think. You can
reach you to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist
on Facebook x and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok ork
Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 3 (58:16):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
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know if we can use your name and message on
the air. If you got more to say than can
fit in that voicemail, why not instead send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
We are the entities to read every single piece of
correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the
void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (59:04):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Oh, folks, friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realist, we are
returning with a classic episode that I'm gonna say it, guys,
this is This is a banger. This is such a
fascinating thing. It's got a venn diagram with ridiculous history
as well. Animals at war, do you guys remember like
the cutesy stories that pop up on social media where
(00:24):
someone will say, you know, in World War what, this
tiny scrappy yorksheteria was awarded medals by the Queen due
to his I don't know something.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I love a good dog metal you know they deserve it.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Well, it's his courageous efforts in alerting someone about something.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah, and there's also the story of the cat who
may have I don't think he became an officer, but
he was commended for his rating abilities.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, he was definitely a gentleman, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yeah, a tinker tailor's soldier spy add all in the package,
one feline package of the feline variety. So, whether it's
Beast of Burden, scouts, sentries, or you know, attack dogs,
animals have always been conscripted into human conflict, you know,
like marching into war with elephants and so on, and
(01:20):
a lot of a lot of times. As we discuss
in this episode, folks will assume that this is ancient history,
but as we'll learn, the practice continued in the modern
day and evolved.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Oh yeah, Docsin's getting in tiny little holes to root
out enemy soldiers.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, or the experiments with cybernetic cat spies, bat bombs,
you name it. Oh man, this is wild.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I love this one.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Well, let's hop right in.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Party on that my name is Nola.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
guest producer today, Seth Johnson. So help us find a
nickname or a moniker for him, if you feel so inclined.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know now.
It's it's a fairly well known fact here in the
(02:41):
studio around the office, and so that we are animal
lovers ourselves Seth has three dogs, as he as he
described them, two full blown mutts and one pug. And
then Matt, you have you have a pooch as well, right.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yes, I do have a pooch, a full blow she's
got the mutts. Yeah, And you've got several feline companions.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, you know, oddly enough. And Nolan and I both
have have cats. Nola, I think you have a cat
named Robert.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I have a single cat goes by the name Robert
interchangeably with Fernando. We named him Fernando before we found
out that he actually already had a name. It was
Robert because he has a bob tail. I get it.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
So we're you know, we're not alone by any means.
Our species has a long story history with animals. They're lovable,
they're dangerous. If you're listening to this in twenty nineteen,
a ton of them are endangered. Yeah, so they're dangerous
and endangered. And today we're exploring the secret stories of
(03:47):
animals beyond well, technically the secret story of non human animals.
Beyond the typical fetch Fido, you know, pet your cat
kind of things. Beyond the world of pets. We're talking
about animals in the military.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
And there are a lot of those that you probably
think of immediately as we're saying that, right, and we're
going to talk briefly about some of those, but we're
getting into the deeper waters where animals are used in
such unconventional ways.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
It gets weird very quickly. But first let's set the stage.
Here are the facts.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Animals have been used in combat roles since time immemorial,
ancient times. Occasionally they would be in support roles, other
times actually weaponized. While dogs and horses were some of
the first critters used in war, horses of course, being
one of the most historical representations of the popular images
you see of war horses decked out in armor and
(04:48):
the like. There are only two examples of a much
wider field than you might expect.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
You know, a horse is a horse. Of course, they're
some of the most popular. But over the past thousands
of years, humans have used camels, donkeys, monkeys, elephants, dolphins, rats, cats, pigeons, pigs, oxen, moose,
and more.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Oh, thank you, thank you for saving us. There it
felt like it was about the beat was about to drop.
But we have we have used these to some sort
of either logistical or tactical advantage for a long, long, long,
long time, and honestly, we never really stopped nowadays with
(05:33):
the with the rise of mechanized transportation. Nowadays we see
horses still around, but not as crucial as they were
to say, uh, nomadic parties on the steps, right or
Napoleonic warfare. Yeah, so that means that statistically speaking, humanity's
(05:54):
favorite non human animal gets the gets the spotlight now,
and those are dogs. So when you think of I
mean what most people think of a pet, statistics prove
they think of dogs. And who hasn't seen those adorable
pictures of dogs and military vests, you know, or who
hasn't been at the airport and had a tough time
(06:19):
try not to pet the drug.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Dog exactly, or the I've seen several memes of shibinos
with ak's some of those. Oh no, sorry, no, that's
not a thing.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I got one that Trump's all of that. Okay, So
I saw a picture of a guy with his dog
insize head was inside a watermelon and it was cut
and then he opens up the watermelon and there's a
dog inside. Wow. Yeah, just the head there was like
a hole cut and the bottom of the watermelon. The
watermelon is surrounding the dog's head. He's very happy. It
wasn't you know? There was no no animal, No, not
at all. But the thing is when you look at it,
(06:51):
you know, forever second, like what am I looking at?
And then the watermelon parts and there's a it looks
like there's a dog like living inside the Watermelon's the
cutest thing I've ever seen in my life. You canonize that, Yeah,
well that image alone.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
You know, the United States military can certainly weaponize things
of that nature, but they have other ways of doing
this too. There's this thing called the US War Dogs Association,
and they've kind of given us some basic categories in
which are types in which dogs have been used for
military purposes right over the years.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Maybe not necessarily today, but yeah, they have seven broad
categories and we can list through these pretty quickly. So
first century, it's what it says on the tin. These
dogs worked on a short leash and they were taught
to give a series of escalating warnings. They could growl,
they could run around like they were irritated, or of
(07:46):
course they could bark, and they were most useful during
the evening when attacked from cover or from the rear
was most likely.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yeah, and that feels like the most traditional use of
a dog for almost guarding purposes in a way, you
know to the days of wolves. Yeah, if you're around
a campfire or something, having a dog that is tame
and near your campsite, it would be very, very beneficial.
But then you've also got dogs that are actually going
to go out on patrol or scout with humans, and
(08:20):
a lot of these are trained to work in silence.
These would these guys would try and detect or at
least attempt to detect snipers, any kind of other ambushes
from you know, an enemy force. But especially if you're
dealing with something that you've got not a quarantined area
but an area of operation, right, these could kind of
patrol the area as well. But a type of dog
(08:43):
needs to be trained for this. You can't just get
any breed essentially, or any dog with any disposition for this.
They have to be some of the most highly intelligent breeds.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
German shepherds a lot of the time, right, or at
least those are attack dogs. They're definitely used as they
seem pretty versatile because they're very highly intelligent and trainable.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
I imagine you just don't want a Golden Retriever for
this one. Yeah no, because they would make friends.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yeah. Well, it's crazy too. They've got a statistic here,
and again we're getting this from the US War Dogs Association.
Quote scout dogs could detect the presence of enemies up
to distances of one thousand yards and that's way before
any of the human operators would notice these enemy forces.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
And just FYI, this is an interesting statistic that I
found from how stuff works. Actually, the cost of training
a military dog per animal is around between twenty thousand
to forty thousand dollars. So this is very specialized training
that goes into being able to do these tasks and
doesn't come cheap.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
So the third category there would be the messenger. The
most desired quality for a messenger dog was loyalty and
they had to be able to work with two handlers.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Like one on each side.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah yeah, and so that can be a problem with
some animals. When the militaries of the world attempted to
train cetaceans, they found that they had difficulty passing like
take getting the dolphin or what have you. To also
be cool, with the field agent instead of just being
cool with the trainer. But then we have mind detection.
Those dogs have a cool nickname. They're called M dogs.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I feel like I've met an M dog somewhere, but
it was probably at a dive bar.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
For some reason, all of this is reminding me of
Metal Gear Solid and the Diamond Dogs. I don't know
if you guys are aware of that.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Nope, Okay, well it's been a while since I played
the Metal Gears.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
The Diamond Dogs. Yeah, that's a David Bowie reference right there.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
It is, that's correct. Oh, should never mind. There are
lots of there's a lot of games that you need
to play, all right, keep going.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
So then there are casualty dogs. This is a more
somber duty, but this is enormously important. They're like search
and rescue dogs, but they're meant to find the bodies, yeah,
you know, with the is not if the rescue is
not possible while the person's alive. They are meant to
(11:06):
pinpoint the casualties.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Right now, Can we jump back to the mind dogs
really faster?
Speaker 1 (11:10):
I feel I'm always open to talk about M dogs, man.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Okay, because I feel like I've been glossed over some
of the end part there because there's something you found
in the research bend that was just about how difficult
that job is. Because remember, these animals are essentially performing
a job, the job of detecting minds and other metallic
and non metallic explosive devices, while there's let's say a
(11:35):
gun battle occurring or explosions happening around. Just how difficult
that job is to perform in actual combat.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Oh yeah, yeah, very stressful, right, yeah, yeah, So the
m dogs, despite having one of the coolest names, did
not in fact do the best job just because the
circumstances were so fraught with peril.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
The one I admire immensely were the tunnel dogs oh Vietnam,
because they used to have humans as well be tunnel
rats who would drop into the secret Viet Cong tunnels
hideouts and headquarters, and that just I don't know why
that one was when that's terrified me, Like if you've
(12:20):
ever been buried alive, it's not a pleasant experience that
like you wouldn't I'm not normally claustrophobic, but it just
takes like one night in the dirt to not want
to ever do that again.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Have you seen that whole movie where I think it's Ryan,
the guy that plays Deadpool. It's like the whole movie
is him and buried, a live situation. Ryan Reynolds said
his name was that Deadpool's name?
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah, yes it is. But I do not recall this film.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
It's called buried. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it's called Buried.
Sounds like a very unpleasant film. I don't know that
Ben would enjoy it very much. I always think of
that scene in kill Bill when she's buried in the
coffin and clong her way out, and that was to
me the most visceral depiction of like what it might
feel like to be buried alive, and it is. It
is not good.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Yeah, to totally I agree with you there, but I'm sorry.
All this stuff makes me think about Docsin's and I
don't know, honestly, I don't know if.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
They were they were bread to hunt badgers.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Yeah, but I know that. I don't know if they
were used in for the purposes specifically of being a
tunnel dog. But dang, that's like you couldn't create a
better version, a better chassis.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, you could have put their legs a little closer together.
Probably made a little more traction.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
They're bread to hunt all burrowing animals that were in
need of that position. That's why, despite their diminutive frame,
they have a warlike belligerent demeanor.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, I said it.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
It's true.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
It's true. It's very true.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Ben. Back back to casualty dogs, it makes me think
of rescue dogs, not not in that what we think
of when we think of like getting a rescue shelter dog,
but like dogs that would rescue people from avalanches. You
might have seen cartoons where you have these Saint Bernards
in like Switzerland, the Swiss Alps, with these little barrels
around their neck that I think had some sort of
brandy in them that would revive like a passed out,
(14:07):
snowblind traveler and poor sap that got stuck in an avalanche.
Oh the thing as well.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I always wondered if if they really did wear those
and oh, I just I just found a picture. I
mean it definitely, that's a thing I found. Yeah, I
found a picture for petful dot com. What's in a
barrel around a Saint Bridard's neck? But it seems like
there's a long and disputed history, but they definitely at
some point at least one of them did it. Tunnel dogs,
(14:34):
I think, incredibly brave explosive detection dogs, right, that is
the That is the seventh category you'll see on war dogs,
and those are just what they sound like. They are
trained to use the astonishing canine scent of smell to
detect explosives before human beings could. So these these dogs
(14:56):
are in Rock, Afghanistan, a lot of other war torn areas,
and that only factors in these seven categories only factor
in official working dogs. So these are not those heartwarming,
buzzfeedy stories of you know, like Sergeant Peppercorns or whatever,
who is a little you know, cocker Spaniel that the
(15:17):
French ran into one day and now he has his
own uniform and people have to salute him and stuff.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Oh Sergeant pepper Corns.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
It just I don't know, is trying to get something
besides Sergeant Pepper. You know.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
It's beautiful all those.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Different you know, Peter Nincompoop or something for all the
always sunny fans there. But those poochas are inarguably crucial
in their own very endearing, very sweet way. But that
is not why we are here today, is it. No?
Speaker 2 (15:47):
But really quick the Saint Bernard neck barrel not a
real thing. It was an invention of a painter and
then it just sort of caught the public's imagination. So
apparently not a real thing. But Saint Bernard's wore bred
in that area of the Swiss Alps where people were
They were used as rescue dogs in that way, but
did not have the barrel.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Well, now we know Saint Bernard's no barrel, no bar
But the reason the other things we are talking about
today are the way animals have been used right for
wartime and other things. And we've got a couple examples
that will laundry list here a little bit, but some
are a little more strange than others. Did you guys
do an episode of Ridiculous history on the bats? The
(16:27):
explosive bat idea.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
We've done an episode on a few of these. Actually
there was another one involving dolphins. But let's start with
the bats for sure.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Because they were incendiary, right, that was the whole point.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yeah, So the US almost used bats loaded with napalm
and something they call Project X ray.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
The idea here was that.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
It would create a wave of fires throughout Japan conflagration
that would destroy the primary cities. However, the plan was scrapped,
not because the bats were bad at their jobs, but
because they were very good and they escaped. They burned
down a hangar in New Mexico, a military officials car,
(17:07):
and everyone was against it.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
If I'm remembering correctly. They were just on timers as well,
so it wasn't like they could be triggered individually in
some remote way. They were released, and the ideas that
they would they would kind of roost in the eaves
of these very flammable homes as you know, like a
lot of Japanese homes, paper doors and you know, all
wooden frames, and the idea was smart. Uh, they would
(17:30):
be undetectable. People wouldn't think anything of it, and it
just didn't didn't go as planned, but it was a
pretty smart idea.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
And so so they had just like like a bomb
essentially attached to them, and it would just.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Carry unsteerable uh yeah, untrainable.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Grenade rules you pull the pin and you throw, you know, but.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
In this case a million bats. Yeah, because it was
a ton, right, it wasn't just a couple. It was like, wow,
that's insane.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
And then on the flip side. The Japanese did a
weird similar thing, not involving animals, but involving balloons that
they would just like release and hopefully the winds would
take them into North America. And a few of them
made it, but mainly they did not. But this idea
of just like blindly releasing weaponry into the world is
(18:18):
very strange to me and dangerous.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I mean, this is so back to animals. The camels
have been used as mount some beast of burdens since
time immemorial, but they were actually used as quote unquote
suicide bombers during the Soviet War in Afghanistan. And the
problem with that terminology, of course, is that the camels
could not consent. Yeah, it's still the very medieval or
(18:41):
ancient practice of like lighting pigs on fire and then
sending them to run at the enemy.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
And just remember that Soviet war in Afghanistan. It's not
the whole two thousand and one and beyond war that's
back in the day seventy nine to eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yes, that is correct and very good point there. Dolphins
super intelligent, of course, It's no wonder militaries all around
the world would love to work with dolphins. They're great
at locating mines, they're trainable, they have some behavioral issues.
Real dolphin behavior does not match maybe what you think
(19:15):
of when you think of Flipper or Echo. The dolphin
I think was the Sega Genesis game.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
That game was hard.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yeah, but Ben, I have also seen that episode of
Drunk History.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Trust you're talking about that.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
You're talking about the we're adults here, you're talking about
the dolphin hand.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
A true story.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
So with with with Lily, with like the researcher, Yeah, yeah, the.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
LS Lily language language instruction.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
There are some freaky dolphin action going on in like
a flooded laboratory, like dormitory kind of situation. Right, Yeah,
that's for another day.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
So, along with dolphins, the US Marine Mammal Program also
trains sea lions to detect enemy divers sea lionel spotted diver,
and they're supposed to attach a tracking device shaped like
a handcuff to one of the enemy's limbs.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Whoa.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
They're also trained to locate and recover military hardware and
crash victims at sea. The US is very careful to
state that these cetaceans, you know, the dolph, well, these
cetaceans and the sea lions and so on are not
taught to attack people. Yeah, that's what they say.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
They just want to put a little handcuff like thing
on your leg, that's all, a little anklet, just a
little tag, just want to access arise.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
So again there's there's some murkiness around there, and it's
not just due to the depth of the ocean. Will
will figure out exactly what's going on there or for
some disturbing things in that regard. But going back to
the idea of blindly releasing something, one of the most
dangerous uses of animals in warfare would be the use
of insects because that ties directly with germ warfare and
(20:57):
the spread of weaponized disease.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Yes, there's an historical use of this in Japan when
that country attempted to use insects as weapons during World
War two, and the whole idea there was to infect
the you know, military members and people in front lines
and people in all places, a lot of places with
cholera and plague that would be carried by these insects. Essentially,
(21:22):
like you said, ben as germ warfare, they're just carriers
for these things.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Oh and little known fact. Counter fact to this is
the US tested very similar methods on its own people
like in Florida, very poor black neighborhoods. In Savannah, Georgia,
it dropped these flea bombs and it was like, you know,
that's very swampy kind of area with a lot of
potential for disease and it was really bad. What do
(21:50):
we find ben that people actually did were confirmed killed
because of some of those tests.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
I believe that's correct.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
In Japan also did this as well, Like we were
talking about the same thing, dropping fleas of like inside
bombs essentially. That's that is very very intense to me.
It's ingenious. But I mean is what do you call?
Is it biological warfare?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yes, it must be right, absolutely, and it's a real
scorched earth approach too. I mean it's it's really just devious.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, because there's not a when those things are deployed
there there wasn't any technology in form of like a
topical treatment or something applied to friendly forces or in
terms of course, you can't steer the bugs once they're loose.
So yeah, this is brutal, it's insidious. Let's go to something.
It's a bit of a lighter note before we plunge
(22:45):
full on into the darkness. But let's do that after
a word from our sponsor. All right, we're back. No,
you'll love this one. Birds have also been used in
war fair. Trained parrots were positioned on the Eiffel Tower
during World War One. This is kind of hilarious. It's
(23:06):
low key hilarious. The parrots were trained to alert people
to incoming enemy aircraft. However, the parrots could not differentiate
between enemy aircraft and Allied planes, so they were just
losing their frickin minds repeatedly. This is very stressful to
the humans working with them, so the birds had to
(23:28):
get mixed. In the Second World War, an American behaviorists,
the famous BF Skinner, devised a plan to train pigeons
to ride in missiles and guide them to enemy ships.
The plan was scrapped for a while, but then resurrected
from nineteen forty eight to fifty three as Project or.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Con Isn't that an amazing image that gets conjured in
your brain? A pigeon piloting a missile? Nope, or a bomb? Yeah,
don't care for it.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
It's like Doctor Strangelove. But now it's a pigeon with
the hat.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Yeah, and the bombs are coming down. The parrots are
like German aircraft.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Don't like it one bit, so.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Nolan, in the interest of your sanity, we'll move on
there too. We are just scratching the surface here. While
the initial idea may seem unorthodox, the logic does bear up.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Oh I like that it, she bears up.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Oh ah man, all right, you got me on that
on fair and square. First, some animals do naturally have
abilities superior to those of humans. Technology has done a
lot to mitigate this gap in recent years, but in
some cases animals still remain the superior, most cost effective solution.
(24:43):
The nose of a dog is amazing, right, it's tough
to replace that.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
And second, now this is cold blooded, a lot more
so than we like to be here. But it's true
if something goes wrong with an operative, if it is
an animal and not a human being, it's a lot
less expensive to train another one of those animals than
(25:08):
it is to train a soldier. Now, that is that
is pretty rough to look at it just from a
war cost perspective in that way, but it's also the
pr effect of having a lost soldier versus a you know,
perhaps a lost dog. It's it's different.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Let's just do lost bird. Okay, we can all stomach that.
I'm not a lost dog. Makes me sad. Lost bird,
I'm like better off without him.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
The birds, I like, don't get lost. They're too smart.
The corve the corvets.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
That's I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
I think every every living creature could get lost. But yeah,
that's a that's a good point, right. So it's no
wonder that animals continue and will continue to fill various
rules in multiple militaries. But just how far does this go?
And what if there is more to the story. Here's
where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, depending on who you ask, intelligence agencies and militaries
all across the globe are using animals in a much
more nefarious and secretive, clandestine ways. So let's talk a
little bit ben about the Middle East and its strange
preoccupation with animal conspiracies.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Oh, this is crazy, Yeah this, Let's spend some time
on this, and we have to be pretty careful going
into this. We and all our fellow listeners need to
realize that this bizarre, distinct subgenre all a different, larger
conspiracy theory does occur. As you said NOL in the
Middle East, and it is wrapped up in I would
(26:43):
say more than its fair share of anti Semitism, because
we have numerous sources in the Middle East claiming that
animals are being used in top secret programs to surveil
local populations, terrorize them, and attack them. However, the majority,
by which I mean close to one hundred percent of
these accusations are coming from other countries in the Middle East,
(27:08):
directly leveled at a single other country, which is Israel
and occasionally the West quote unquote the West.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Can we talk about the eagle that got detained, Yeah, yeah,
the heel or a Hesbelo affiliated TV stations is according
to a report by Slate, they were saying that an
eagle was detained north of Beirut because it was suspected
of being an Israeli spy.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yep, there are multiple things. We can even trace it
back to the one of the beginning reports that made
international news let's call it the.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Great Shark Wave of twenty ten ten ten, is.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
That like a Sharknado, it's like a shark NATO plus
a It's like a shark Nado plus one of those
monster truck rallies plus jaws. Yeah, that's pretty accurate. It
sounds cool, right, unless you're one of the people who
gets wrapped up in the shark wave. In December twenty ten,
there were several shark attacks off the coast of Egypt
(28:10):
near some resort towns, and people appeared on the Egyptian media,
notably one guy named Captain Mustaf Ismail, and this captain
claimed that a GPS tracking device found in one of
the sharks was not your garden variety GPS. These GPS
trackers are not uncommon in the world of terrestrial biology
(28:30):
or marine biology. But the captain said that this was
instead of a GPS device, this was a steering device.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
It was a.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Guiding device planted by what he described as agents of
Israeli intelligence. Egyptian officials attributed the attacks to more mundane
factors like the actual politicians and the intelligence community of Egypt. Said, well,
you know, sharks normally aren't super into eating peas people,
(29:00):
so we're looking at over fishing, We're looking at maybe
teaching them to associate people with food, dumping sheep carcasses overboard,
even unusually high water temperatures. Through their credit, Egyptian scientists
also weren't buying it because you see, GPS is not
a remote control. But here the conspiracy match was lit,
(29:23):
and it once that match was lit, the story itself
became what people nowadays call lit af Because we have
several more stories of these strange accusations, they just get weirder.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Okay, So let's go to the Iranian military advisor Hassan
Feruza body in twenty eighteen, when asked about some environmentalists
who were under arrest at the time, this military advisor
said that they weren't your average environment lovers, your average
tree huggers. Instead, they were representatives of Western powers hiding
(30:00):
spy lizards in uranium minds. I remember this story very,
very distinctly. This is fantastic. He claimed that the environmentalists
had lizards and chameleons on their persons at the time,
and for Uzibaldi told the Iranian Labor News Agency quote,
we found out that their skin attracts atomic waves and
that they were nuclear spies who wanted to find out
(30:23):
where inside the Islamic Republic of Iran we have uranium
minds and where we are engaged in atomic activities. Now
there are some issues with this.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, Yeah, First, atomic waves are not a real thing.
It is true that in many cases it can be
illegal to be caught with living creatures in your possession,
especially if you are smuggling them in or out of
a country. But unless it's an endangered species, it's a
weird thing to charge someone with. Next, the scales that
(30:55):
cover lizards are called skewts. It's neat right sc es.
And these scoots are made up of two types of
keratin proteins, keratin A and, in a stunning plot twist,
keratin B. Neither of these types of protein have any
special ability to detect uranium or other radioactive materials. Furthermore,
(31:19):
reptiles are cold blooded, so they want to be where
it is warmer. Right. Often it's a tough cell to
say that there are cold blood reptiles who have some
sort of motivation to burrow deep into a cold uranium mine.
So overwhelmingly people outside of Iran and outside of Firozibaldi
(31:40):
say this is hotwash.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
See, the lizards were meant to seek out the warmth
of the neutrons coming off of the radioactive materials. Guys,
that's the whole point, right, that's the whole point. You
release a chameleon in a very cold cave, It's going
to go directly to the uranium. It's not rocket science.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
It's size.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Being facetious, of course, But what an interesting concept. Uh yeah,
because what do you do with them? What do you
do with the lizards after they've found the uranium?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
What of them?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Give you some crickets? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (32:18):
What's the intelligence part? What's the actionable thing?
Speaker 1 (32:22):
I guess it could pinpoint the location of the mind
would be the idea. So it would have to be
a numbers game. Then you would either drop them into
suspected minds, right, or you would drop them into everything
in a region and just hope that one of them
seemed to seem to prove the supposition. Okay, all right,
(32:43):
well what about this? If lizards feel a little too
beyond the pale, how about something more reasonable like squirrels.
Also in Iran, in two thousand and seven, right.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, Iran and people working for Iran
captured fourteen squirrels in the local news agency there said
that these little guys were equipped with some kind of
equipment that was meant for spying, and allegedly the squirrels
had some kind of you know, like a small device
attached to them essentially that was used for eavesdropping. So
(33:14):
you would just put them in a park somewhere or
maybe near a government building, and you could just wait
for the squirrels to capture whatever conversations occurring at a
park bench.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
And honestly, that's become sort of a trope, a cliche
of this idea of the squirrels are listening, you know
what I mean, Like you see it in in sketch. Kay,
that's exactly right. It was Brick and Morning, Rick and Morty.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yes, it was Rick and Morty. They traveled to an
alternate universe where Mordy is able to hear squirrels and
they have to burned out. They basically burned down the
universe to escape, right.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Yeah. Yeah, but the conversations the squirrels have are so
clandestine and beautiful. So good.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, it is really good. I en missed that episode.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Can we talk about the fact that we're gonna be
on Harmontown. You guys we talked to on social media
when we talked about I'm really excited about it. It's
really cool because we're big fans of Dan and we're
gonna be on Normantown.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
And Dan's gonna be on this show too, assuming we
don't just irreparably burn our bridges yet we're on Harmontown.
We're all dan Is still friends with us, We're all
still friends with him. Who knows, Maybe we'll get rowed
out on a rail, tired and feathered, hopefully not hopefully
not hopefully not so Okay, maybe the idea of squirrel
spies seems a little too far into the realm of
(34:30):
science fiction. That's fine. I got a different pitch for you.
How about dolphins. They're super intelligent and in twenty fifteen,
Hamas claimed that they arrested a dolphin that was spying
for Israeli forces. What I love about this is when
you just hear that headline. I have this picture of
a grizzled dolphin that can somehow walk, yeah, and it's
(34:52):
got its flippers, and it's got sunglasses on for some reason,
and it's being walked out past the cameras.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
They got me. What do the dolphins sounds sound like?
I don't know. That's not pretty good.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
It's hard to get high enough the dolphins.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
It I thought it was pretty good. I appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
So the Times of Israel reported allegations that this dolphin
was outfitted with spying equipment, including but not limited to cameras.
Which interesting about that is that we know stuff like
that has happened before, right in real life. Now, this
next one is something that I think is safe to
say none of us saw coming. There's a very specific
(35:46):
sort of narrative thread with animal spy allegations concerning vultures.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Massive, massive, disgusting, creepy, gangly dangly red face weirdo creepy vultures. Yes,
from Lebanon. In twenty sixteen, Lebanon security officials detained a
huge vulture as described previously by myself with the six
point five foot wingspan this is making me cringe inside,
(36:14):
and claimed that it was a surveillance vulture, an animal
working for Israel, because there was apparently a tracking device
attached to one of its creepy vulture.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Feet, which means, I mean, come on, that's the thing, Okay,
So I had this tracking device attached to its foot.
Yet again, a GPS transmitter is not some sort of
magic remote control gizmo. Tel Aviv University was tracking this bird.
And in addition, this is the weird part. In addition
to having a GPS transmitter on the bird, the bird
(36:46):
also had tags on its wings, along with an engraved
metal ring on its leg that read Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Not super secret. That's not good spycraft. It's not as
crappy a job as James Bond, who always like is
eternally day drunk and tells people his name right and.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
What he does.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah, that guy's a mess. But this bird wasn't much
better if it was supposed to be a spy. This
is not the first time Griffin vulture, specifically because these
are massive, right, it's not the first time one of
them has been accused to be an agent of massade
of the Israeli intelligence Agency. In Saudi Arabia in twenty
(37:31):
and eleven, one was captured, and of course local news
and scuttle but began to orbit intensely around this concept
of a quote unquote Zionist plot, and then pretty much
the same thing occurred in Sudan in twenty twelve. Around
this part of the world, many people were certain that
there was a new type of superspy and it was
(37:52):
not a human, it was not a robot. It was
a buzzard, which is strange because, again, from everything we
can tell, these birds were likely being tracked as part
of some biodiversity conservation project.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Yes, it was for beneficial means for both the birds
and for our research. Uh at least that's that's on
the face of it, right. Maybe, Look, we can't fully
discount that some of these animals weren't spying for somebody, right, sure,
because we'll never know. We never got to interrogate these birds.
That vulture. You never got to put it down a
(38:26):
room with a polygraph nol.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
And as far as I know, we have no Doctor
Doolittle esque figure on our in our governments. You know,
that's all we need, you guys.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
Yeah, that'd be pretty cool for counterintelligence. So doctor Doolittle,
I mean, surely.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
There there's I don't know, is there. No, there's no
kind of like there isn't there a way to communicate
with dolphins that I make that up. I made.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
We talked about it. It was the whole hand thing.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
No, I mean yeah, but I mean, like you know,
with your mind, man, come on some kind of helmet,
you know, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
I feel like that's also a rick and Morty thing.
But I'm just seeing image.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
There's the intelligence. There's lawnmower man flowers for Algernon esque thing.
Yeah with the dogs, Okay, and I thought that was
a good one too. So we also see other birds.
In twenty thirteen, Turkish officials claimed they captured a kestrel
falcon spying for you guessed it, the state of Israel.
(39:20):
There's a great illustration of this alleged culprit over at
tabletmag dot com. Like the other birds, this kestrel has
a bunch of markers identifying it as a research subject,
and people are thought to be researching migratory patterns. The
problem is that the very signs that should have made
it plain these birds were part of various studies were
(39:44):
instead taken as evidence of spycraft. And then the very
next year, fishermen in Egypt suspected a stork of being
the next James Bond. So far, so far, astute listeners
will notice the trends here we mentioned at the top
the country's claiming the conspiracies of foot in the Middle
(40:04):
East almost universally accuse one country of creating these animal spies.
So it is doubtlessly true that anti Semitism is informing
some of these claims. If it is possible to bracket
that racism and that discrimination and just look at the facts.
Could any of these claims about animals as spycraft and
(40:29):
animals and war, could any of them be true? We'll
tackle that after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
All right, we're back.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
So if we just look at the trends, the claims
of birds being used for spying often seem to be
cases of birds that were being tracked for science rather
than some sort of intelligence agency. Allegations of squirrels to
date remain unproven.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
And if you know anything about what the squirrels are
doing or talking about, please write to us right now.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Or run be safe. You can only save yourself.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
It's too late. It's too late.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
If you nodded, they heard you. It's true that there's
no solid proof for against the squirrel thing. Yet, however,
there are a couple of former CIA agents and wildlife
experts who are very skeptical about this because they think
it would be very difficult to train a squirrel or.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Yeah, and if you could, you would have a trained squirrel,
and not a squirrel that appears to be just your
run of the mill guy out there collecting food.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
And this all leads mainstream writers to dismiss a lot
of the wilder conspiratorial accusations. Writing for the Toronto Star,
journalist Gil Jarren says, many animals undoubtedly serve in Israel's
army and security services. Dogs sniff out bombs, I'll paka
help mountaineers carry their loads, which I do not know
(42:00):
and is true and is cool. But tales about the
use of sharks, birds, rodents, or, as it has also
been claimed, insects and the service of the military are
more the fruit of imagination than hard facts. So with
that in mind, let's go to the facts, the crazy,
strange facts. The United States is continuing to work with
underwater creatures, evaluating their usefulness as spies. Remember we talked
(42:25):
about that twenty ten sharkwave accusation right off the coast
of Egypt. It turns out that back in two thousand
and six, the Pentagon looked into using cybernetic sharks as spies,
and in twenty nineteen the BBC reported on it.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
It sounds not real. Yes, I've just got to couch
that if none of this sounds real until you see
it on the BBC website based off of a declassified document.
So I'm going to read part of this. The latest
project from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects DARPA. As
you know, we're big fans of darpover.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Sound cue at this point.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Really. So they aim to improve military intelligence by using
a range of aquatic creatures from large fish to humble
single celled organisms, and they're using them all as underwater
warning systems.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
And here's a quote. We're trying to understand what these
organisms can tell us about the presence and movements of
all kinds of underwater vehicles in the ocean. That's from
doctor Lori odor Nato, who's the program manager of the
Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors or PALS project. I love my
underwater pals.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
Yeah. Well, of course the Navy comes through and they're saying, look, look, guys,
we've said this before in the past. We're gonna say
it again. We are not trying to use any creatures
of the sea to do any kind of aquaman stuff.
We're not trying to have them harm the water craft,
the ships and stuff. We're to hurt the humans that
(43:54):
are out there. We're just using them as sensors.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Do you believe that.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
No gonna, Why would you not train it? I guess
it would be much more difficult to train a cetacean
to attack a specific person a specific uniforms.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
You remember faces, Oh, like an.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Assassin, So targeting a single person rather than a a
I mean a generic type of soldier or military person.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Maybe there's some signal that you have to give to
prove your friendly. But also, I'm very taken annul a
video games amount. I'm very taken with the idea of
a dolphin centric assassin's creed franchise.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
You know what I want is a cephalopod centric assassin organization. Really,
I mean think about it. They're like super smart. They
can like open doors and stuff. Didn't you see I
find a NEMO too. They only live two years though
that's a bummer.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
That's part of what And they're the closest thing we
have to approve an alien intelligence.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Okay, so fix the aging problem right the walk on
the lens?
Speaker 2 (44:57):
I remember, you just put them in a mech situation.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I wrote a great sci fi story about Did I
ever send you that?
Speaker 3 (45:02):
No?
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Oh man, it's a trip. But let's not lose that
piece of the story. Maybe there were not any remote
controlled cybernetic shark drones, which again sounds insane off the
coast of Egypt, but the United States certainly wanted or
wants to make them, or.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
Did, and it's just not it's still classified.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
The project was discussed that the two thousand and six
Ocean Sciences Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Honolulu, Hawaii.
There wasn't a lot of news about the proposal after that,
and you know, if it was just in the proposal
stage at that time, it doesn't feel like a few
months would be enough time to get something like that
(45:43):
in the field, right, certainly if that was their starting position.
And we can't forget that. People in Norway did find
a runaway whale spy who is very friendly, very acclimated
to humans.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
Yes, and you can read about that on the BBC.
There are several Again, the BBC has some amazing reporting
on spy animals.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
Yeah, there must be someone in there. It's like their thing.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Yeah, because it really was a beluga whale, right, that's
this is the one we're referencing that had a harness
on it that specifically was let me see if I
can find exactly what it said yes, it had a
harness on it that was supposedly Russian or of Russian origin,
and it also had a go pro holder like one
(46:32):
of those little, you know, the mounts for a GoPro,
But there was no go pro attached on this beluga
whale that was found. It's certainly odd. But again, when
people spoke about it, or the officials, the Russian officials
when they chimed in, they were basically saying, come on, guys,
you think we would put one of our specially trained
(46:54):
spy belugas out there with a harness they clearly is
Russian by Beluka.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Oh yeah, which goes back to the birth thing, like, yeah,
if it's a spy, why does it say Tel Aviv University?
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
But it's also like one of those tropes you see
in like sci fi moves or one of like a
satellite falls and people like, it's clearly a Russian satellite
because it's got Russian text on it, Like would they
really do that? Maybe they would, I don't know, yeah,
you know.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Especially the question is did they intend to get caught?
Who did they want to identify this?
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Well, here's the crazy thing. It is, at least according
to this reporting. There was a colleague of the Russian
official who would comment in saying, you know this is crazy.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Come on.
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Of course it wasn't this, but they were saying they
don't do such experiments with Belugas specifically to have them spy,
but they have. The Russian military has been capturing and
training Belugas for quite some time. So again it's like
the shark thing, like if you go back four years,
then you go, oh, wait, there are some programs that
seem pretty similar to this.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Right, so maybe the maybe the accusations are sort of
urban legends, right, maybe they're they're growing from these legitimate concerns.
But at this point it is no secret that militaries
and intelligence agencies do very, very creepy things, and furthermore,
tail as old as time. When people are prejudiced against
(48:14):
a giving group, it's not hard for them to accept
even the most ridiculous accusation. If you, for some reason
hate a person or a people or a group of
any sort, then your BS detection, your BS meter is
all out of whack. You'll believe anything. If you hate
everyone who watches Night Court, then you see a study
(48:38):
that says people who watch Night Court are you know,
necrophiliacs or something. You'll just sort of nod to yourself
and go, that makes sense, checks out.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
Yeah, you know that whoever that person is that hates
people who like who watch Night Court, there's something very
wrong with them. And that is the only kind of
person that I hate is people who hate people who
watch night Din.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
The guy from Night Court just pass away, Harry Anderson, Yeah,
he deeps, that's the way. Last year, at the age
of sixty five.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
I read a study mat that people who hate people
who hate Night Court actually tend to perform higher on
spatial aptitude tests. Do you believe that I did?
Speaker 3 (49:13):
You just find that somewhere?
Speaker 1 (49:15):
I found it somewhere.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
Sure, so you used your aptitude to find it.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Good work.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
So again, however, despite the fact that we cannot we
cannot like extract the socio political soil in which this occurs.
We cannot extract that racism. It is true despite that
that there are clear improving cases of animals being used
(49:43):
in ways that are, like you said, Matt, similar to
the more conspiratorial claims we see floating around. We cannot
confirm whether the specifics of a certain narrative are true.
You know, like twenty ten off the coast of Egypt,
there were cyber sharks. But we can point out a
couple of things in the news just a few days ago.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
That, yeah, just happened really fast before you even get
into this. But there's some weird serendipity occurring with this
show right now, and we won't go into all of it.
But Ben and I were going to record this episode
last week. Uh huh. Noel wasn't gonna be able to
be here, and something came up in my personal life
where we weren't We were not able to record this thing.
(50:26):
Then over the weekend there was reporting specifically about this thing,
which blew my mind right.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Yes, according to the BBC, in an artcle released just
a few days before we recorded this, the CIA finally
admitted it used pigeons to spy on Soviet forces in
an operation nicknamed or code named rather Takana and Operation
to Kana. Fit these pigeons with these incredibly endearing tiny
(50:56):
cameras right.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
On the breast area, facing down a little.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Bit right, so as the pigeon is flying, the camera
would automatically take photos of whatever was within line a site.
They didn't stop there Takana also trained ravens to deliver
and retrieve objects up to forty grams from windowsills of
otherwise inaccessible buildings.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
And let's just go really fast into the Takana pigeons
with those cameras. It's something so fascinating. So let's imagine that.
I mean, it's the way. It's the way carrier pigeons
would work. Back in the day. Pigeons would be taken
from place A with wherever you're going, Right, if you
were going to be in a caravan going somewhere, you're
(51:38):
going to another encampment somewhere, Yeah, you'd carry a pigeon
that had the home of A. You go to place B.
You release that pigeon at B with a message. It
carries it back to its home in A. Right, So
they would do something very similar where they would train
the pigeon to have a home in place A. Then essentially,
if imagine drawing a straight line to play B and
(52:01):
in between those two places would be let's say a
Russian facility or Soviet facility back in the during the
Cold War, in between directly in between those two places,
and they would release them from Place B. It would
fly over this facility, take a ton of pictures and
again you'd release probably multiple or several of them, take
(52:21):
a ton of pictures as it's going back to its home,
capture the stuff. It was a brilliant plan and they
were actually doing it.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
What's the mechanism for taking the pictures?
Speaker 3 (52:30):
It's that little camera we were talking about this.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
Remotely like they're actually timing.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Yeah, yes, kind of old school exactly. So if they
fly over something that is not worth photographing, they're still
going to get a bunch of shots, right. Uh.
Speaker 3 (52:46):
They also had and those ravens that you were talking
Oh yeah, oh.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
Man, So okay.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
They used a flashing red laser beam to mark a
target and a special lamp was used to sort of
train the bird to come back. According to the BBC article,
on at least one occasion in Europe, the CIA delivered
an eavesdropping device by bird via this raven mechanism to
a window, although there was no audio picked up from
(53:14):
the target, so they got the bird to do it.
It's just no one talked about anything important in the
room where it happened. So the CIA also looked at
whether migratory birds could be used to detect chemical weapons.
There were some sort there's they like allude to trials
where there was some kind of electric brain stimulation to
(53:36):
guide dogs remotely, and there was a project to put
listening devices into a cat. This stuff got ugly real quick.
But I did want to end on a lighter note.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
And I hope this is this lighter are you going
to talk about?
Speaker 2 (53:50):
This is lighter.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
No tricks, no tricks, no tricks. There is an incredibly
adorable thing that we'll call the audio dossier, the Otter dossier.
Speaker 3 (54:02):
Okay, I don't know this, Uh it is.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
It reads like a book report.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
It's called a dossier on Lutra the Otter, and it uh,
this came out of a Freedom of Information Act request. Uh.
This reads kind of like a book report by someone
working in the intelligence agencies from Uncle Sam who just
really loves otters and is trying to find a reason
for people to use them in experiments. Lutra the Otter
(54:28):
is a compact, powerful, intelligent animal capable of negotiating land, water,
and obstacles with great facility. And it goes on to
talk about how much this person, this anonymous author loves otters.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
OW.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
You can read it on you can read it online
for free too. It's one of the more pleasant things
in the vault.
Speaker 3 (54:48):
Yeah, Geo Cities dot FBI. It's like otter fan fiction.
Speaker 1 (54:52):
It's like fiction that's very well put.
Speaker 3 (54:54):
Yeah, I really thought you were going to jump straight
to Acoustic Kitty.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Acoustic Kitty is the hair tail. That's the one where
they installed an implant into the kitty's brain. Basically, right, yes,
very inhumane, bad times.
Speaker 3 (55:09):
And well, well there were listening devices inside the cat,
or that was that was at least the plan, right
to release a bunch of these cats with listening devices
physically inside them.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (55:20):
But then they tested it one time the and the
kiddy cat that they put it in immediately jumped out
into the road and got smashed by a car. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
The lutra usually sleeps on its head with its arms folded,
and it likes to sleep with humans.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Paid someone and it has a cut of tummy.
Speaker 1 (55:41):
It's all but that man, seriously, and then they say, never,
if possible, confine or leaveing a zoo or kennel an
otter which has enjoyed any human companionship or freedom.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
Well, there you go.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
This person just was an otter buddy.
Speaker 3 (55:56):
Ah wow uh the basic.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
That you know, I'm gonna stop reading sections of this report.
If you ever feel down, go check out Adosia on Lutra,
and do please let us know what you think about
these allegations of animal spies. What we're finding is that
while the timeline for a lot of this stuff may
not match up, the pure potential of the technology is
(56:24):
there in some cases.
Speaker 2 (56:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (56:26):
Well, yeah, and there's now an historical declassified trail of
the CIA using animals for these means exactly pretty closely
to what's being you know, suspected in a lot of places.
It doesn't mean it's true, especially the later ones. And
like you said, Ben, you can't divorce some of those
feelings that occur in regions with the reality. It's tough
(56:49):
to do that.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yeah, absolutely, And that's why we want to hear from you.
Let us know what you think about this. Do you
think there is any sand to these claims. Furthermore, if
you had to pick an animal that would cooperate with
you and an aspir ring, what kind of animal would
you pick him? Why?
Speaker 2 (57:08):
You can let us know.
Speaker 3 (57:09):
Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure at least a few
of us took honey badgers, right.
Speaker 2 (57:13):
I'm absolutely going to be an otter at this point.
Speaker 3 (57:17):
All right, what about you, met? I mean I would say,
Honey Badger, if I could have a friend, Honey Badger,
that would be on my team and do stuff.
Speaker 2 (57:25):
I wouldn't be on your team because he doesn't give
a well, that's.
Speaker 3 (57:28):
The whole point. Though, he wouldn't. He wouldn't g a
F for anything but me.
Speaker 2 (57:35):
I don't think he would g a F about you.
Speaker 3 (57:37):
No, he would. He would be my boy.
Speaker 1 (57:38):
Okay, okay, So we would have to do this podcast
with an animal that may well attack and eviscerate us,
and the only thing keeping it in line is that
it adores you.
Speaker 3 (57:52):
Yeah, I'd be like, yo, stop man, it goes for
the giblets first.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
I mean, you know, and that's our classic episode for
this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (58:07):
That's right, let us know what you think. You can
reach you to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist
on Facebook x and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok ork
Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 3 (58:16):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
three st d WYTK that's our voicemail system. You've got
three minutes. Give yourself a cool nickname and let us
know if we can use your name and message on
the air. If you got more to say than can
fit in that voicemail, why not instead send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
We are the entities to read every single piece of
correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the
void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (59:04):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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