INTERESTING: "Cat Spies and Adrenaline Gerbils: The 8 Strangest Government Animal Programs in History"

A vulture carrying an Israeli university's GPS device is being detained by Saudi Arabian authorities after landing in the town of Hyaal last week. The bird is being accused of spying. This comes on the heels of an Egyptian authority speculating that Israel had put bloodthirsty sharks off the coast of Egypt in order to hurt tourism. "What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark [in the sea] to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question," a South Sinai governor said, "but it needs time to confirm." As it has in the case of the vulture, Israel called the shark charges "ludicrous."

Still, it may not be so unreasonable for governments to suspect these animals aren't totally innocent. Without many people's knowledge, nations have been making spies, telephones, and weapons out of beasts big and small for decades. These are some of the more interesting known examples.


#8: War Pigeons

American, British, and French forces each used homing pigeons extensively throughout both World Wars, mostly by training them to deliver secret messages on the battlefield. The pigeons proved so successful and undetectable, in fact, that the U.S. Army even founded a pigeon breeding and training center in New Jersey that remained open from 1917 to 1957. Before it ended, one scientist had attempted to create a pigeon-guided missile system, aptly titled "Project Pigeon."

In England, at the close of World War II, 32 war pigeons were awarded Dickin Medals, the highest decoration of valor a war animal can receive in the United Kingdom.


#7: Anti-Tank Dogs

The Russians began training anti-tank dogs as early as the 1930s, just in time for the four-legged soldiers to become bombs under advancing German tanks in World War II:

...trainers would starve the dogs, then train them to find food under a tank. The dogs quickly learned that being released from their pens meant to run out to where the training tank was parked and find some vittles. Once trained, the dogs would be fitted with a bomb attached to the back, and loosed into a field of oncoming German Panzers.

Not only was this tactic inhumane, it was problematic for a number of reasons, one of which was that German soldiers started executing dogs on the battlefield on sight. Other dogs would run scared from gunfire and hide out in Russian encampments, endangering the good guys.

Due to its unpredictability, the dog as bomb trend eventually died out, but not before Japanese forces and Iraqi insurgents had tried it out themselves.


#6: Adrenaline Gerbils

Research on behalf of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the 1970s discovered that gerbils could be trained to smell an increase in adrenaline in people's sweat. The Israelis, who are always looking for smarter ways to catch terrorists, took the Canadian study and used it to formulate gerbil checkpoints in their Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. Fans wafted the scent of suspects' hands toward the gerbils, who would then press a lever if they noticed heightened adrenaline.

The British Security Service, also known as MI5, almost established a gerbil force of their own for interrogations, but the Israelis scrapped their gerbil checkpoints when it was discovered that the animals couldn't distinguish between terrorists and people who were just afraid of flying.


THE 5 STRANGEST GOVERNMENT ANIMAL PROGRAMS IN HISTORY HERE