Part of the What Do You Know About That series
by Ruth Orr
EARTH — Animals being used in warfare is probably just about as old as the concept of warfare itself. Sometimes they were trained for specific jobs, as useful as the soldiers themselves. Other times they were conveniently located and could be used to ruin the enemy’s day in one way or another. Sometimes it was entirely unintentional but worked out great (for one side, anyway).
You’re probably familiar with the concept. Horses are the most obvious military animal, the cavalry was a powerhouse in any military excursion. Who can forget the great war elephants that got dragged up and over the Alps by Hannibal to spook the Romans? Dogs are another obvious choice: loyal, trainable, with especially good sniffers. Homing pigeons were great for passing messages around. The point is, there are loads of animals that have served and died in our wars for millennia, and you’re likely not surprised to know any of the ones I listed off.
But we’re nothing if not an inventive species, and we happen to be really, really inventive when it comes to figuring out new ways to kill each other. So it wasn’t just the basic normie animals that got roped into our territorial and/or religious disputes. Some of our distinguished fellow comrades might really surprise you.
I’m gonna kick things off with a bang here, pun intended: exploding sharks were once in R&D by the U.S. Military. As if the idea of being in a sea battle and having to deal with regular sharks wasn’t enough, some enterprising (possibly mad) scientists decided in the aftermath of WWII that we needed an even better underwater bomb delivery system. They hit on lemon sharks as their primary subjects.
So how was that supposed to work? Basically, they were trying to come up with some fancy headgear for the poor blighters. Once outfitted with their new hats, the sharks would receive repeated electric shocks on either side of their heads in an attempt to make them turn one way or the other, sort of like kicking a horse. The shark would be steered remotely in this fashion up to enemy ships, at which point in time the bomb implanted in the headgear would be detonated, wiping out both the enemy and the brain-fried fish.
Unfortunately, sharks turn out to be even more stubborn than anticipated. They’d either ignore the shocks completely or react violently and usually in opposition to it; instead of turning away they’d turn towards the shock, ready to fight and bite. The program eventually ended in failure. Good news for the sharks, bad news for the science boys.
But we’re not entirely without marine allies— dolphins are infinitely more friendly and trainable than sharks are. The U.S. Navy’s Marine Mammal Program has been going since 1959, and trains bottlenose dolphins (and California sea lions) to detect, locate, mark, and recover objects everywhere from harbors and coasts to out in the deep ocean.
But wait, it gets weirder. During WWII, the U.S. was also working on a new explosive option to be delivered by air in an attempt to attack Japan directly.
I am of course talking about bat bombs.
Each bomb would consist of 26 trays, each holding 40 hibernating bats. Each bat would have a timed incendiary device. The bombs would be dropped and deploy their own parachutes, giving the bats time to fly out and look for new roosts… like the wood and paper homes and buildings that comprised most Japanese cities. Once the clock ran out– boom! Lucky for the bats I guess, some other American scientists came up with an even worse bomb option and we went with that instead.
Back to non-exploding options, the CIA rolled out the concept of acoustic kitties during the 1960s. It also sounds like a dope band name from the era, so props for that. Basically they would implant a mic in the ear canals of cats and radio transmitters in the base of their skulls. They’d become mobile spies that would constantly report back to the CIA. Their first deployment involved letting a cat loose near a Soviet compound in Washington D.C. The cat was pretty much killed immediately when it wandered right under a moving taxi.
After spending $20 million on the project, the CIA had to abandon it, because, as anyone who’s ever met a cat could’ve told them, cats do not do what they’re told.
And then there are the bees. Another ally from antiquity, bees have been used for millennia to commit low-grade war crimes. The ancient Greeks and Romans would take hives and catapult them over the walls of besieged cities to unleash chaos. The Greek city of Themiscyra, famous for its honey production, turned its bees against the Romans in 72 BCE by sending them in swarms through the tunnels the Romans had tried to dig beneath their walls.
At the battle of Tanga in German East Africa (now Kenya) during WWI, bees refused to take sides. Unlike Switzerland however, they chose violence and attacked both the invading British forces and defending Germans. The Brits fared worse however, and complained bitterly that the Germans had schemed with the bees rather than admit they got beat by a bunch of bugs.
Not all military animals had to have such specific uses of course. One of the other key defining characteristics of our species is that if we think something is cute, we try to dress it up in silly clothes and take it home with us. For soldiers on the front, virtually any animal nearby was fair game for a battalion mascot, and some of them were more useful than others.
Wojtek was a proper soldier. He enjoyed wrestling with the men, saluted when he was greeted, and got really into smoking/eating cigarettes and drinking coffee in the mornings. Perhaps most importantly, he loved downing beers. You know, just guy stuff.
He followed along with his Polish comrades on their campaigns through Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Italy, working largely as a pack animal by carrying 100-pound crates of ammunition around. The boxes usually required four men to lift them. His efforts earned him a promotion to the rank of corporal.
Because I know you’re all invested in Wojtek’s life story now, don’t worry. He survived the war and retired to the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland. He was often visited by former Polish soldiers, who tossed him cigarettes over the railing. He remembered his fellow soldiers, acting excited when they came to see him, and reacted joyfully whenever someone spoke Polish to him. He died peacefully at age 21 in December of 1963, weighing 1,100 pounds. What a bear.
Things didn’t always end quite so well for mascots— Tirpitz the pig was the mascot of HMS Glasgow during WWI. Originally an enemy pig, Tirpitz lived aboard the German cruiser SMS Dresden until the allies sank it in March 1915. When the Germans abandoned the ship, they left Tirpitz behind. The crew of the Glasgow spotted the pig floundering in the wreckage and saved her (almost drowning themselves in the process). They brought her aboard and jokingly gave her a German Iron Cross award for staying on the ship when everyone else fled. She was a jolly good mascot until 1916 when she retired, but unlike Wojtek, she didn’t have long… she was auctioned off for pork three years later, raising nearly two thousand pounds for the British Red Cross. Who wouldn’t want to eat a war hero?
There are hundreds if not thousands of animals that have served in various capacities throughout history. More often than not things didn’t end well for them, but it’s nice to know that even in the darkest depths of bloody war, we still make an effort to protect our non-human companions. Perhaps that little shred of compassion is the most important piece of what makes us human after all.