From Darwin to Dolittle mankind has been trying to communicate with animals, some have secretly been more successful than others… We take a look at some of the more extraordinary stories of animals in espionage and international operations. As spies or saboteurs, animals can be our friends and sometimes our deadly foes!
Combat dolphins
Clever dolphins have been trained to detect incoming submarines, divers, and even to plant bombs. Satellite imagery indicates Moscow deployed marine mammals to help protect a Black Sea Naval Base during the 2022 Ukraine war and at a base in Syria - and they’re not the only country relying on animal spies. US dolphin operations date back to at least the Cold War and a strange operation known as Project OXYGAS.
In the 1970s the CIA developed a miniature listening device that needed a delivery system. An amateur entomologist on the project suggested a dragonfly, and a watchmaker helped build an ‘insectothopter’ drone with a miniature fluidic oscillator for the wings but unfortunately, the dragonfly didn’t operate well in the wind (something you’d have thought was obvious!). Still, the CIA’s appetite to develop robotics grew and grew with some startling and humorous results.
NYC's #1 experience is also its best-kept dating secret!
Explore each other's attributes and potential with challenges designed by a Head of Training at MI6. Use the code dates22 and get two tickets to SPYSCAPE for just $69!
An American spy pigeon named G.I. Joe was flying dangerous sorties in Europe when he saved the lives of 100 Allied soldiers during WWII. Joe isn’t the only brave bird, of course. Pigeons have been a part of nearly every European Army since the 1880s and quite a few secret American missions including an operation codenamed the Tacana Project.
The next time you spot a colony of sea lions sunning themselves you may have stumbled on a top-secret mission. The US Navy Marine Mammal Team MK5 trains sea lions to recover test equipment fired from ships or dropped from warplanes. California’s sea lions are the elite of marine animals, outperforming even trained humans, so why are they a combat diver’s worst nightmare?
Operation Fortitude, the Allied effort to mislead the Germans into where the June 6, 1944, D-Day landings would occur, is a complex story involving playboys, party girls, criminals, a Spaniard with a diploma in chicken farming, and a woman obsessed with her Jack Russell terrier named Babs. At the helm? Chief spy Thomas Argyle, an ex-Seaforth Highlander officer nicknamed ‘Passion Pants’.
Get a FREE copy of a hot new thriller, spy story, or crime novel every Monday with a special Story Mondays ticket to SPYSCAPE HQ. Next Monday it's The Ransomware Hunting Team by Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden - a real-life technological thriller about a band of eccentric misfits taking on the biggest cybersecurity threats of our time. Don't miss your FREE copy when you experience SPYSCAPE HQ next Monday.
Norway raised eyebrows when it revealed that a captured beluga whale wearing a Russian harness was a suspected spy, although it’s certainly not the first time an animal was accused of espionage. The Pentagon reportedly trained sharks, the CIA has a specialist ‘K9’ dog unit, and the US even trained cats, although Atomic Kitty seems to have outsmarted even the CIA, but what exactly was Sudan up to with a squadron of pelicans?
