As the public speculated that a beluga whale spotted playing rugby with a group of South African sailors near the Arctic Circle could’ve actually been a super-secret ‘spy whale’ for the Russian Navy, one might recall that mankind has a long history of using animals for military or espionage purposes.
Pigeons
Carrier pigeons were used by humans as a means of communicating over long distances since time immemorial.
Homing pigeons also saw extensive use during World War I, delivering important messages across with one of them, named Cher Ami, even earning the French military decoration "Croix de Guerre with Palm" for her exploits.
Acoustic Kitty
In 1960s, CIA made an attempt to literally turn cats into walking listening devices by implanting a combination of small microphone and radio transmitters into the feline’s body.
The project, which cost about $20 million, was scrapped in 1967, with its first mission ending in a spectacular failure after a “bugged” cat that was released near the Soviet embassy in Washington to eavesdrop on men talking in a nearby park was promptly run over by a taxi.
Bat Bombs
In 1942, a dental surgeon from Pennsylvania named Lytle S. Adams pitched the idea of weaponising bats by attaching timed incendiary bombs to their bodies and then loading a bunch of them into a bomb-shaped casing to be deployed from a bomber aircraft.
While the idea was approved by President Roosevelt, the project was eventually abandoned as by 1944 the brass apparently believed that the endeavour was moving too slowly, with the US leadership turning its attention to a much more destructive weapon type which was eventually unleashed upon Japan a year later.
Dolphins
Both the United States and the Soviet Union sought to employ dolphins for military purposes, such as mine sweeping, for example.
And in 2015, Hamas announced that its frogmen commandos had managed to capture a dolphin equipped with surveillance equipment, with the organisation claiming that the creature was deployed by Israel on an espionage mission.
Rats That Go Boom
During World War II, the British Special Operations Executive sought to wreak havoc on German infrastructure via so called rat bombs – rat carcasses filled with plastic explosives.
The bombs were to be distributed near German boiler rooms in the hope that upon discovering one, a stoker would try to dispose of the unpleasant find by tossing it into the furnace, thus possibly triggering a boiler explosion.
The plan was dropped after the first shipment of rat carcasses was intercepted by the Germans.
Hangus, Squirrels and Vultures
Sometimes, animals were also accused of conducting espionage missions when it wasn’t immediately clear whether such accusations held any merit.
In 2007, Iranian authorities apprehended a group of some 14 “spy squirrels” spotted in the vicinity of a nuclear enrichment plant.
In 2011, Saudi authorities took down a high-flying vulture after suspecting that the bird was used by Israel for spying.
And an anecdotal story dating back to the 19th century alleges that during the Napoleonic Wars, residents of the town of Hartlepool hanged the sole survivor of a French shipwreck, a monkey that was dressed in French army uniform for the crew’s amusement, having never seen a monkey before and suspecting that the creature was a spy.
