Callsign War Pig: The Bizarre History of Animals in Combat

FOR millennia humans have been using animals, both domesticated and wild, to further their military capabilities.

It is easy to understand the myriad roles dogs, horses, pigeons, mules and even war elephants have played but what about some of the lesser known animal combatants.

Some of these examples aren’t for the faint hearted and we’re fairly sure that they’re unlikely to see a return to the field of battle any time soon but other examples are in active use by some military forces and insurgents around the world:

Many ancient sources including Pliny the Elder, Procopius and Polyaenus cite the use of pigs in warfare as an effective weapon against war elephants due to their squealing.

Both Polyaenus and Aelian refer to the appalling act of dousing pigs in crude oil, pitch or resin before setting them on fire and then driving them towards the opposing army’s war elephants at the battle of Megara in 266BC. The resulting stampede by the elephants killed many of Antigonus II Gonatus’ own forces and effectively broke the siege of Megara.

A cruel but effective weapon war pigs have thankfully passed into history and long may that remain the case.

The origins of the US Navy Marine Mammal Program can trace its routes to California in the 1960’s when scientists wanted to study marine mammals with the possibility of extracting useful scientific knowledge to assist with hydrodynamic naval projects. it was quickly discovered that both Bottlenose dolphins and Californian sea lions could be effectively used untethered in open water to carry tools, messages and locate and rescue lost divers.

In 1967 the project was classified and evolved into a major ‘black budget’ program and was only declassified in the 1990’s. The program now operates with five marine mammal teams codenamed MK 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 which can deployed at 72 hours notice by land, sea or air to regional conflicts or forward staging areas. Their primary mission capabilities include:

1. Mine hunting: Dolphins and sea lions were used to great effect in the Iraq War, 2003 where they helped detect over 100 anti ship mines and booby traps from the port of Umm Qasr.

2. Force Protection; MK 6 dolphins and sea lions are used as sentries to protect harbours and ships from enemy divers by attaching buoys to their air tanks.

3. Object Recovery is the speciality of the MK5 team of sea lions who recover test equipment fired from ships or dropped from planes into the ocean. In this capability they outperform their human divers due to longer working times and no problem with repeat diving at depth.

During WWII the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) came up with the novel idea of filling dead rats with a small amount of plastic explosive and then using their agents to place them near to boilers in enemy factories. The concept was that the stoker would use the most effective way of getting rid of the dead rodents and shovel them into his furnace. The resulting small explosion would be enough to cause a small penetration of the high pressure steam boilers and thus create a much larger explosion which would disrupt the German’s industrial effort.

The first shipment of exploding rodents was intercepted so it never saw actual use but the result of the find caused enough chaos in the search for more booby-trapped rats that the SOE claimed it as a successful operation.

More recently insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have used dead animals to conceal improvised explosive devices...

The idea of using animals to carry bombs can be traced back as far as 1267 when the Sheriff of Essex was accused of plotting to release flying cockerels carrying incendiary bombs over London.

The truth behind this is unclear but it hasn’t stopped the idea from spreading with animals such as anti-tank dogs (used by the Russians in WWII to no great effect), incendiary bat bombs (Project X-Ray, a US WWII plan to attack Japan), kamikaze camels and even donkeys in the recent Iraq and Afghanistan insurgencies.

It seems that the limit of grotesque human imagination is the only bar to many more crazy animal-munition mix ups.

For seven years in the 1960’s the CIA attempted to train cats to carry out spy missions on Soviet embassies and even contemplated using them against the Kremlin. Titled ‘Project Acoustic Kitty’ a battery and microphone were implanted into the cat before an antenna was placed in it’s tail.

Thought to have cost almost $25M the project was deemed a failure due to distractions such as hunger and the inherent difficulty, as all cat owners will know, of training a cat to behave as required. It was cancelled in 1967.

It may seem like ‘fowl’ play but in the build up to the attack on Iraq in 2003 the US Army deployed 43 chickens to the Gulf to sit atop Humvees and act as early warning systems of chemical weapon attacks.

The science behind it was based on the issue of synthetic systems being affected by the high levels of oil particles in the air due to burning oil wells. Unlike their technological counterparts chickens are very sensitive to chemical attack due to their air sacks and would therefore act rather like canaries used by miners to detect the build up of lethal air and gas.

The project was cancelled when 41 of the chickens died from illness almost immediately and didn’t see frontline action so, unfortunately, there was no opportunity for medals.

Have you heard of more bizarre cases of animals combatants or can you debunk the myths? Comment below or on our Facebook and Twitter pages.