Since the dawn of
warfare as we know it today, humans have been using animals as tools of
war. Elephants, horses, and other pack animals have been used to carry
loads for thousands of years, while fiercer predators like dogs and
lions have at times been used to inflict damage on enemies. Later, as
human communication media shrank in the early 20th century, we began
using animals like pigeons or dogs to carry messages for us through
areas where human soldiers could not travel. Given that animals have
always been an integral part of human existence, it’s natural they would
be a part of warfare, too
More recently, there have been allegations that some nations have previously used or are still using animals as spies. Dolphins, in particular, have indeed been used for bomb detection and marine reconnaissance thanks to their high degree of intelligence and cooperation with humans.
Soviet Navy training a dolphin in the port of Sevastopol.
While this particular use of dolphins has stayed relatively obscure, a new report published by The Guardian
this week highlights the military use of aquatic mammals – this time
whales – and may suggest that some of them may have gotten loose of
their training grounds or were turned loose into the ocean years ago.
What would happen if these highly-trained animals did indeed escape back
into the wild? Isn’t this how the Planet of the Apes reboot started?
According to The Guardian, fisherman in the small Norwegian fishing village of Inga have in recent weeks been harassed by a mysterious white beluga whale
wearing an unidentified harness or apparatus of some kind. The whale
reportedly attacks the fishermen’s boats, pulling on rigging and loose
nets and following them incessantly. The fishermen claim the whale
appears to deliberately seek out their boats before engaging in the
anomalous behavior.
The harness the whale wears appears
to have been made to carry a camera or some other type of equipment – or
a weapon. To make things stranger, some fishermen have even gotten
close enough to inspect the harness device the whale is wearing and say
it bears the words “Equipment of St. Petersburg.” Norwegian biologists
have contacted marine biology laboratories in Russia for answers, but
all of them seem to want to point the finger at the Russian Navy and
deny all knowledge.
As it turns out, Russia’s Navy along
with the Murmansk Sea Biology Research Institute carried out a research
program during the height of the Cold War which attempted to train
beluga whales to guard entrances to ports or underwater bases and attack
any intruders who came close. Could this be one of those long-lost
whales?
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