Picture: tolomea/Flickr (CC)
Via Robert Beckhusen via WIRED’s Danger Room Blog:
Killer dolphins with knives and pistols attached to their heads. It might sound crazy, but that’s reportedly one element of the Ukrainian navy’s restarted marine mammal program.
The program reportedly includes training dolphins to search for mines and marking them with buoys. But Ukraine also plans to train the dolphins “to attack enemy combat swimmers using special knives or pistols fixed to their heads,” according to RIA Novosti. A source inside the Ukrainian navy told the agency that the exercises, which are being conducted at the state oceanarium in Sevastopol, are “counter-combat swimmer tasks in order to defend ships in port and on raids.”
Now they’ll be trained to kill, allegedly. If so, it won’t necessarily be the first time. Russian commandos trained to fight dolphins in case the animals were ever used against them. The Soviet navy once deployed dolphins armed with hypodermic syringes loaded with carbon dioxide, according to one dolphin expert who advised the Sevastopol base on caring for the animals after the program first ended. Soviet dolphins were also purportedly trained to attach mines to ships, and were attached with parachutes before being thrown from helicopters.
Rumors about killer dolphins have also been directed at the U.S. Navy. One former Navy dolphin trainer said the Navy experimented with arming dolphins with syringes…
[continues at Danger Room]
