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CLASSIC: Step Aside, James Bond: The Strange Stories of Espionage Animals · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: There's a man who leads a life of danger. Eye
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: he meets, he stays a stranger.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Sorry, I was sort of combining to James Bond styles.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: That's great, you're your secret agent, Ben.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Oh geez ed your secret agent. Nol Of got our
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: super producer, mister Max Williams. Here with us were a
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: classic episode that we just love. Uh No, there was
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: a period of time wherein you and I went down
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: this rabbit hole of animals used for espionage.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: A bit of a rabbit themed rabbit hole at times.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: I don't remember if we got into bunny rabbit specifically
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: in this one. I know i'd probably joke about strapping
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: the lasers to the sharks with fricking lasers, you know,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: and all it's very Austin Powers the type stuff on
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: the surface, but there's some pretty clever stuff.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: In here, and some of his stuff actually did work.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: And so, without further ado, here is the true Ridiculous
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: History of Espionage animals. Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: What are some of your favorite animals? Friends and neighbors. Personally,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of corvids, and you know, I
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: like an octopus. Hi, I'm bend.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm nol and I too am a fan of
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: the cephalopods. Not the corvids, though, man, I know those
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: sketchy little bastards can go straight to hell.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Oh they're great though, No, all they're great, and.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: They just see shiny stuff and they go at it.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I mean, nobody's perfect for sure. The
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: closest to perfect we know is, of course, our long
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: suffering super producer, Casey Pegram.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: You know, he's like tinker Bell. Look at him, Look
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: at him floating around there. I hope he's not spying
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: on us, like some sort of crazy fairy drone.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: That would be ridiculous.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: Well, you know we're in the right place for that, I.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Guess, right, because this is ridiculous history, and today we're
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: diving into the world of subterfuge, espionage, spycraft, danger and
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: you know, trench coats and fedoras or maybe not give
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: me some more Oh okay, more spy stuff, yeah, okay.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Of their hats. Will there be hats, of course?
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a wide selection of hats.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Because on this article from how Stuff Works Ridiculous History
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: of the Use of Animals and Espionage, there is a
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: lovely image of a dolphin and.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: A trench coat wearing a hat.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: So that sounds every that is like the r totem
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: animal for today's episode.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: We should be hanging out with him, for sure.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: Dothan in a trench coat wherein a hat?
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there we go.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: That's a set ma scene. That's beautiful.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Yet, because regardless of whether you hate a country or
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: you love a country, or whatever opinions you have about
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: how countries interact, the fact of the matter is that
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: everybody is trying to spy on each other m hm.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: And it's the tale as old as time to steal
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: the beauty in the.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Beastline song, as old as rhyme. There we go.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And what may surprise some of us is that
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: not all spies were human. No, as you pointed out,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: animals have been used in espionage. We don't have a
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: confirmation on the dolphin trench coat phenomenon yet.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: Oh you mean Dothan in a trans coat wherein a hat?
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: And what better way to begin to explore this topic
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: than through a specific example what you.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Say, Yeah, I'm all about specific examples, Ben, And as
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: it turns out, I have one, because you see, there
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: have been some stories of late about stuff happening off
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: the coast of the Gaza Strip where under the water
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: swimming with these like flipper even there are some underwater
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: creatures that are decked out not in hats and trench coats,
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: but in high tech surveillance gear with the intention of
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: doing reconnaissance work. And these weren't frogmen or deft swimmers. No,
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: these were dolphins.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's true. In August of twenty to fifteen, officials
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: for Hamas alleged that a dolphin wearing spy gear included
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: as an old described an underwater camera, was working as
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: a spy for the Israeli Army and the dolphin was
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: captured off the Gaza coast. But here's the thing. Hamas
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: was not the first government to make such clim.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: And right up front, there are a lot of fun
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theories attached to this stuff, the kind of things
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: we would maybe talk about in our other show. Stuff
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: they don't want you to know, or we apply critical
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: thinking to conspiracy theories. For example, in Egypt, there were
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: a rash of shark attacks that were blamed by some
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: on the Israeli government. Not the same as being a
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: shark spies, but it was you know, supposedly sharks deployed
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: for the purposes of messing people up on the other
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: side of a ideological divide.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: And in the case of the Egyptian report, the idea
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: for people who believed in this was that the Israeli
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: army was throwing sharks in the water to damage tourism.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: Hmm.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Interesting, seems kind of a you know, Goldberg Gesk way
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: to go about damaging tourism. But you know, and in
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: twenty twelve, residents of Turkey found a dead bird and
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: they claimed that it was decked out with spy equipment.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: I believe that was also an accusation against the Israeli government,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: who responded by saying they had tagged the bird to
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: track it right for conservation purpose.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: Well, sure that happens all the time.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Like I think I told you before, I used to
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: do stories about a facility in my hometown of Augusta,
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Georgia called the Savannah River Site where they would track
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: animals to determine whether nuclear cleanup efforts had been successful
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: in these areas where they were storing like nuclear waste
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: from dismantled weapons.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: And so that's a thing that scientists do all the time.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: But we're talking about things that were largely disproven, right,
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: But this stuff does exist. I mean again, it's not
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: just in other countries. It's very much a part of
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: the history of the CIA and the United States.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, we're Uncle Sam is very pro animal spies.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: So despite the various stories that sound kind of silly
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: that you'll see pop up on the internet, you know,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: a dead bird is a master spy and all this
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: other stuff, it does turn out that there are real
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: and genuine examples of animals being trained for military operations,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: or more specifically, for this episode, as spies. And it
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: dates back quite a while. In the nineteen forties, the
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: famous psychologist BF Skinner trained pigeons to track targets and
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: steer missiles. And you know, we've probably all heard about
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: pigeons being trained to do stuff, right, isn't Mike Tyson
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: a pigeon enthusiast.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know, But I mean you think about ravens
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: in Game of Thrones or something like that, where they
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: can carry messages long distances and can be trained to
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: you know, homing pigeons and the like. But BS Skinner,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: just to go back, his most famous experiment was the
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Skinner box, and it used operant conditioning, which basically it's
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: sort of like the Pavlovian type of condition which is
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: classical conditioning, where you can train an animal to exhibit
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: or a human even to exhibit a certain kind of
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: behavior by doing something that sides with something else happening.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: So when the dog salivates, they ring a bell and
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: they can eventually get the dog to salivate just by
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: ringing the bell. They offer the dog a treat, the
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: dog salivates, they ring the bell, do that over and
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: over again, especially it's just the bell. There's another story
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: that's very similar in this article The CIA's most highly
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: trained spies weren't even human from the Smithsonian, where a
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: man by the name of Bob Bailey was able to
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: train a spider in the bathroom of his university to
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: go into a defensive pose by blowing on the spider,
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: shining a light and then doing it again, and doing
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: it again, doing it again. Before you knew it, he
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: could just shine the light and then the spider would
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: go into the defensive pose. But operate conditioning is just
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: a little bit different. Because Skinner used these pigeons and
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: put them in this box where he would have them
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: press a button and they would get food when they
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: press that button, and they pecked the certain button, so
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: it wasn't coinciding it. It was literally just getting them
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: to do something on purpose, getting them to do something
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  Speaker 2: voluntary once they've been rewarded enough times and they saw
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: the outcome would be in their favor.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Right, and Bob Bailey is an expert. I want to
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: go back to the spider example. I'm glad you brought
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: this up because it busts a couple of myths that
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: people may have about training animals. And from what we
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: see from what the experts are saying, animals are much
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: more capable of learning than we might imagine. The only
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: catches to guide them toward doing something that they would
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: already be inclined to do. Right, that's I mean, parrots
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: are going to some parrots rather are going to mimic speech.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: So now you just teach them what sorts of speech
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: you would like them to mimic. And spiders don't like
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: things that disrupt their web, so if they can associate
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  Speaker 1: that with something, then their instinct kicks in. Bob Bailey
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: very interesting character in this story because he was a
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: director for the US need Marine Mammal program, which is
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: currently based in San Diego, California. Just based on the
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: name Noel, I think you know the answer to this.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: What are they evolved in?
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're trying to train marine mammals to do Uncle
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Sam's dirty work, right.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Right, Yes, Bob Bailey and his associates undertook this program
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: beginning in the nineteen sixties, and it has an ancient
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: history because it turns out the use of animals and
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: military intelligence to our earlier example of ravens in the
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: fictional Game of Thrones, the use of animals for reconnaissance
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: or communication military intelligence dates back to ancient Grecian times
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: and now, with the benefit of behaviorism and science, and
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: of course the all consuming desire almost lust to have
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: an edge over the enemy me various governments, including the
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: US government, have found ways to apply spycraft to these animals,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: and according to Bailey, they never found an animal they
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: could not train.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: And the kinds of things they were training them to
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: do ran the gamut from surveillance like we talked about
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: at the top of the show, to clearing out minds
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: underwater and to you know, finding lost items and retrieving
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: them and bringing them back to submarines and what have you,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: and to detecting explosives as well.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: So the kinds of things that.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: You could think that you could train like a bomb
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: sniffing dog to do, you could also train a dolphin to.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: Do in an underwater environment.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, this is startling right at first. It sounds
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: like a really cool science fiction pitch. You know, it
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: sounds like a movie that was become.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: A joke in like like Austin Powers, you know, was
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: doctor Evil's talking about you wants the sharks with freaking
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: lasers on their heads and stuff, or you know, it
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: becomes like this SIEI, you know, Spycraft James Bondie kind
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: of trope after a while.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, because the so the Marine Mammal program that we
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: introduced in nineteen sixty, they originally began with more than
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: nineteen species of animals, including they say, some sharks and
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: some birds, and they began to whittle down their choices
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: looking for the best possible animal partner. They ended up
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: with two, the Bottlenews dolphin and the California sea lion.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's because you know this guy Brian Bailey, who
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: is an animal behaviorist and an author who was one
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: of the trainers in the US Navy Dolphin and Sea
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: lion project, just kind of got expanded to be that
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: he said, the more.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: Animals that they had available, the more.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Likely an espionage agency would have success in getting their
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: desired information, which makes sense because you know, a dolphin
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: isn't going to fit every scenario. You know, sometimes maybe
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: you need some a cat for exams that can go
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: into a very high level meeting.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: And be undetected. And that happened as well.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: So we're looking at a menagerie of possible animals, right, Nola,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: You had said that this expanded to include the California
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: sea lion as well as dolphins. Let's focus on dolphins
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: for just a tick here, because the dolphins, along with
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: the sea lions, are playing an instrumental and continuing role
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: in the US military. Specifically, dolphins and sea lions are
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: trained by five different teams in this marine mammal program.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: One team specializes in detecting swimmers, and then three other
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: teams specialize in locating mines. And this is probably where
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: we see some of the most amazing natural capabilities of
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: the dolphin come into play.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: Oh for sure.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: And not only were they detecting the swimmers and detecting
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: the minds, they could actually disable the minds and more
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: or less disable the swimmers by injecting them with compressed air.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: The quote that I have is it had a device
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: on their head that they could use to shoot compressed
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: air into the body of an enemy swimmer, which I
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: assume would wouldn't kill them, but it would disorient them
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: or it would cause them to lose their equilibrium. Like,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: what would be the purpose of this? Why not lasers
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: instead of compressed air?
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: It's unpleasant. Surely there are some Surely there are some calculations,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: like a weapon that would not harm the dolphin. It's
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: probably part of it, you know, instead of just strapping
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: them to explosives and saying, hey, swim toward that. That's
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: pretty cold blooded.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: It was nice of them.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the last team is trained in an object recovery, right,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: so maybe not a bomb. Maybe you are retrieving a
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: black box from a plane or something. Sure, so it's true,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: though we cannot overemphasize that enough. It's true. They were
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: just trained to be like friendly flipper checking out stuff
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: and reporting back to the sub and kind of a
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: lassie style. They were trained offensively. And can you imagine, man,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: can you imagine being underwater, swimming like an enemy territory.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: You're already probably pretty anxious, and then.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Then a dolphin comes at you with an air gun
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: mounted to its head.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: I like to think that there's a high pitched squee
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: of death. I'm looking at you, Casey, can we get
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: a high pitched squee of death?
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: There's murder in that dolphin's eyes. There's at least low
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: grade murder inconvenience.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Right, right, So it makes sense when we're thinking about
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the way that dogs or canines have been trained by
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: the military for a long, long time, right, the same
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: process occurs. Find the perfect species and then look for
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: the perfect traits. With dogs, they began looking for the
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: perfect breed of dog, right, German shepherds. That would be
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: one of the common examples. This program has been pretty successful.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: The Navy spent fourteen million dollars in research on it
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven alone, and as of that time,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: they had seventy five trained dolphins who have actually been
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: more successful saving lives and open water than trained humans.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I guess they're just, you know, it's kind of like
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: bane in the dark night it's like, oh, was old
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: in the sitting you immediately abulpted it.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, excuse me, I'm goen to turn that out.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Put on the subtitles. Man, that character cracks me up.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Apparently they actually redubbed some of that stuff to make
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: it easier to understand, but it still wasn't super easy
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: to understand.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: It's so weird. Yeah, it's like his superpower is to
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: be unintelligible.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it. And also, you know, have giant muscles.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: It's interesting though too. There is this issue of animals that.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Seek relationships with humans are easier to train, but that
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean that there haven't been other attempts to train
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: animals that you would not think would fall into that
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: category at all. And before we get into those, let's
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: just backscheck a little bit. We talked about the top
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: of the show, Bob Bailey, who was the very first
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: director of this dolphin program that the US Navy came
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: up with. Bailey's story, it goes a lot further and
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: intersects with a couple by the name of the Breelins.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: Keller and his wife, Marion Brelin had worked for that
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: famed psychologist BF Skinner in his lab. In nineteen forty seven,
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: they decided to go out on their own and they
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: decided to start their own company, the Animal Behavior Enterprises
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: Company or ABE. But they weren't doing experiments on training
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: animals to be spies for the government. They were training
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: chickens to play tic tac toe and you know, pigs
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: to play the piano, all in the name of commercialism.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Their first big gig was with General Mills, and they
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: trained lots of different animals to do funny tricks to
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: sell the feed the General Mills produced.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: So they were designing sets, they were writing show scripts,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: and they relocate again in the fifties where they moved
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: to Hot Springs, Arkansas.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Which is Bill Clinton's hometown.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: I believe, just a little nugget aside, And once they
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: moved to Arkansas, they opened this thing called the iq zoo.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Will you tell us about the iq zoo ban? This
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: is a delightful, delightful phenomenon.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Sure, the iq zoom is a picture any any endearing
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: pet trick or animal trick that you've ever seen on
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: America's Funniest Home Videos or on YouTube or on the
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: late show of some variety Iqzuo aimed to have them all.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: They had chickens the walked tightropes or gave souvenirs to customers,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: dance to music. They had chicken baseball, which was a thing.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: They had rabbits that would quote kiss their girlfriends, ride
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: fire trucks, and sound sirens delightful. They had raccoons playing
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: basketball and duck's playing drums.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, all of this
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: was just a very lucrative display of that operant conditioning
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: that they worked on under BF Skinner, And all of
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: the while, in parallel while this is going on and
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: they're taking this work and selling it to the masses,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: that Navy program we're talking about is starting to ramp
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: up and get into full swing. And our friend Bob
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Bailey from earlier and he needs people just like Breeland,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: so he gives them a call.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: So this group headed by Bob Bailey reaches.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Out to the Brelins and invites them to come hang
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: out in their facility, which is in a place called
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: China Lake on the edge of the Mojave Desert where
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: they are doing all of this research.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Side fact here, China Lake had neither water nor marine mammals,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: you know, just another side note like Bill Clinton's origin
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: story there. This wasn't Bailey's first time in the desert.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: He had spent time as an undergraduate at UCLA in
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the desert in the nineteen fifties where he was laying
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: traps for kangaroo rats. So they were familiar with these
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: sorts of techniques, right. These people were intellectual peers. They
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: were familiar with one another's techniques, and they said, hey,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: let's vultron up together. Let's pursue this as a group
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: in sixty five. In nineteen sixty five, Bailey agreed to
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: join the Brelins and Animal Behavior Enterprises there in Hot Springs,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: and then, according to Bailey Boom, he found himself in
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: show business.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: I know, it's funny because he was doing this serious work,
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: which is.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Kind of a can be you know, poked fun at,
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: and from our perspective it definitely seems a little.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: On the absurd side.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: But then he went from that extreme working for the
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: government to essentially doing the kinds of stuff you would
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: do in producing like a PBS children's television show. One
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: of Bailey's big contributions at ABE was designing something called
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: the bird brain, which was a kind of Skinner box
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: type situation that allowed you to play tic tac toe
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: with a chicken by you, I mean you, the human listener,
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: me Ben whomever. The chicken was in this cage, and
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: it had a little trigger that was that had a
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: light that flashed on it, and so the bird wasn't
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: actually playing tic tac toe. The moves were pre programmed.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: What yeah, skin, I was a little bit spurious. But
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: if the bird, you know, was trained to respond to
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: your move, so you made a move in the light
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: lit up and the bird did it. And there was
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: a little corner called the thinking booth where the bird
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: would disappear into the thinking booth to press the button
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: and that's when the move would be made. They said
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: that there was a version that allowed the person to win,
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: but typically the bird.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: Always won, and even b F.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Skinner himself apparently could not defeat this tic tac toe chicken.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: But it was a bit of a bit of Carnie subterfuse.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: There we're talking about, you know, spycraft, right.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: And then for an interjection, I'm sure there are a
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: lot of folks here in the audience wondering, wondering about
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: this aspect of the story. Was this considered ethical? No, no,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: it's not. It's not considered ethical. Bailey himself notes that
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: at the time, the relatively new people for the Ethical
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Treatment of Animals had clocked this and they considered it unethical.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: But as we've examined in earlier cases of experimentation and
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: treatment of animals, the rules weren't as established as they
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: are today.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: So let's just recap this. I know there's a lot
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: going on here. Bailey found out about the Brielens, invited
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: them to help him with his program training marine life
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: and birds, and then we'll get in a little bit
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: more of that later. And then he ended up joining
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: their company, leaving that military life doing this kind of
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: more hilarious you know, animal trick kind of side work.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: But then it came back around.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, it came back around. The more things change, the
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: more they stay the same.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: True. You see.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Eventually ABE acquired a sideline, and it was not a
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: matter of having Rubes play a rig game of tictac
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: too with chickens. No. You see, other agencies came calling
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: to Abe, the CIA most particularly, and the Army's Aberdeen
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Proving Ground in limited warfare laboratories. They came to Abe
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: to seek unworthodox solutions to common problems. And this was
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: at the height of the Cold War, So why would
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: they Why would they do this? Why would the Central
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Intelligence Agency hunt down this group of animal behaviorists.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Well, there was actually something of like a dolphin arms
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: race at the time. The CIA had intercepted Soviet intelligence
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: indicating that they the Soviets were working on this as well.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: And that's like the kind.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Of the joke of the Cold War.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Right, if we thought that the Soviets were going to
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: do something, we had to do it better. The Soviets
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: thought we were going to do something, they had to
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: figure out how to do it better. That's actually a
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: big part of that film, The Shape of Water, which
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: I think is great. There's a really cool side story
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: involving Russian spies and trying to steal assets from the
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: United States, the assets happening to be a underwater merman creature.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: And in this case it was dolphins. In other cases
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: it was the allegations of psychic powers. Right, we know
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: that's real. Also, I have a pitch for you, everybody, casey,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: You're ready, all right, Red Dolphin like Red Dawn, but
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: red dolphin. Okay, played by Dolph Lungren.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: Is he still around? I guess he was in the
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: Expendables movies.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, we'll fix it in post. I just want to
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: plant that seed.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Is it CGI dolphin or is it Dolph lungerin like
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: playing a dolphin. I feel like making his body like
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: tight like a dolphin.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: I feel like we should go a practical effect here.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: I think that's the smart move. That's what that's what
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Gielm little Toro would want.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: That is exactly what it would do. And joking aside,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: you're absolutely right, nol. There was this arm race, there
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: was a fear of red dolphins, and this extended to
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: other animals as well. We do have declassified nineteen seventies
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: documentation that elucidates this matter and notes that the Soviets
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: are quote also assessing and replicating US sister while possibly
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: developing countermeasures to certain US systems. But they're talking about
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: dolphins like in the context, they're clearly talking about dolphins,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: and both sides valued this. There's a great quote from
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Robert Wallace, who at the time was heading the CIA's
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Office of Technical Services in the nineties. He points out
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: the advantages that animals have over human spies. Animals can
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: go place as people can't. Animals are un alerting. Let's
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: say we work at a nuclear plant, right, and we
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: have secrets and stuff because those are cool, Sure they those? Yeah,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: And you and I have our trench coats and our hats,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: and then we're going to be on yellow alert when
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: we see another person that's unidentified. But if there's just
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: a bird perched on a branch somewhere, then we'll probably
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: continue whatever our conversation was.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Well, that leads us back to corvins, which is how
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: we started the show. I know that's one of your
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: favorite animals. I can't stand the little buggers, but turns
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: out they're super smart. They don't just go for shiny objects.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: They'll go for about whatever you train them to go for,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: and they're exceptionally strong. They can carry quite large loads
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: in their creepy, little disgusting beaks. Bailey, when he was
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: were with Abe, they had been contracted to help out
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: with some of these animal spy scenarios. He really spoke
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: highly of the Western raven and this is from that
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Smithsonian article by Tom Vanderbilt. He says it operates alone,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: and it does very well alone. He says, they can
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: learn to respond to classes of objects. He gives the
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: example if you've got a big desk and a little desk,
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: you could train it to always go to the small one.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: And then there's the thing about the quite large carrying
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: capacity they have. They could pick up, you know, file
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: folders or you know, even like a diplomatic dossier of
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: some kind.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: But they can deposit things that have listening devices in them.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: They're not necessarily going to be spying themselves, but they
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: could perch on that branch, like you said, and carry
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: a piece of debris seemingly, you know, totally irrelevant, that
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: had some kind of high powered listening device in it.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Right, Yes, and bonus points for corvid intelligence, which could
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: be an episode all its own. Corvids can also identify
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: specific people. They have facial recognition ability, and they also
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: have the ability to teach that to their young. So
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: for anyone who is also wondering the same question that
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: I've thought about off air two, is it possible to
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: train a murder of crows or an unkindness of ravens?
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: That's the group term that follows you and teaches their
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: young to follow you.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: An unkindness. Uh huh, that's insane.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy?
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: It comes up with this stuff.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's relatively arbitrary.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: I think it's people that don't like birds.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: There's a parliament of owls.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds very prestigious.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: But an unkindness, Yes, a raven That sounds like the
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: person that came up with that was a kindred spirit
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: to myself.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: So love them mer hatim. You know, it's inarguable that
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: they have a certain set of skills, but the use
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: of animals in espionage, or the attempts of using animals
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: in espionage, don't stop with ravens and cephalopods. Even insects
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: enter the mix.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: Again From the Smithsonian article, which is a delightful read,
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: they talk about that Army Limited Warfare Laboratory at Aberdeen
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: having a program where they were trying to figure out
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: how to use insects quote for the detection of people,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: and that this reads like it's a joke. It's like
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: scientists ruled out lice in a preliminary test. They simply
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: crawled about at random, like you'd think bugs would do.
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: But mosquitoes were that had a lot of potential right.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're normally at rest. They'll fly at the approach
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: of a host, so they have a routine, predictable behavior, right,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: which could maybe be guided similar to the laser example
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: with the spider. Since they will always rest and fly
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: at the approach of a host, maybe you could detect
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: the approach of people during darkness. But that's not a
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: particularly amazing superpower. There was another series of trials with
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: a different animal that might surprise people, an animal commonly
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: regarded as one of the least trainable pets around, and
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: that is you're talking about hurting cats, right, the common
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: house cat. Yeah, I'm a cat person.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: I think you're a cat person too, Ben, but we
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: both know that they can be arbitrary little fellas an.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: They Yeah, cats, I have two cats. I used to
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: have a dog. I love dogs and cats. I'm an
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: animal animal guy. But it's pretty obvious in many cases,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: not any dean on our feline friends NOL. But cats
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: often are more like a free loading roommate than they
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: are a pet, you know what I mean, Come and go,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: they'll pay rent, they'll do the dishes.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: It's true.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: But cats were used pretty successfully by the CIA's Directorate
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: of science and technology, and they were trained to tune
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: in to human voices. And I've seen a couple of
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: conflicting accounts of this project called Acoustic Kitty, one that
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: implies that they actually surgically implanted a microphone into the
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: cat's ear canal and the cat was trained using the
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: same conditioning methods we talked about earlier to kind of
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: hone in too human voices of a specific type. But
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: then I also saw an account that specifically mentioned that
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: they were used to spy on a high level Asian
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: official during a meeting where cats were wandering in and out.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: So the thing that comes up here with if we're
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: talking about training a cat or a dog to be
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: a spy, it requires a situation where a cat or
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: a dog's presence is not unusual, is not a tip off, right.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Right, absolutely, So you could you could maybe get away
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: with that in a casual, informal setting. But if a
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: cat strolls into a boardroom right or into the right
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: of course doing a cat whistle, then you know the
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: if the cat strolls into some meeting of the joint
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: chiefs of staff, or all of a sudden there's a
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: cat in the oval office, people are going to notice,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: who is.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: That president in our presidential Pets episode that had like
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: a million million pets and his son's brought in like
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: some snakes. There's something in throom down on the boardroom
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: table that is a security breach.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: My friends, It's true that.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: That state could have been wearing a wire. I've been
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: waiting to stay wearing a wire for a while because
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: the cat example that we mentioned here that you that
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: you and I heard some conflicting info on is is
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: fascinating when we get to the idea of that surgery,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: right because according to the story, Bailey worked with the
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: inventor of the human cochlear implant and they turned a
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: cat into a transmitter with a wire running from the
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: cat's in her ear to a battery instrument cluster is
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: kind of gross implanted in its ribcage, and the idea
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: was that they could direct the cat's movement with ultrasonic sound.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: That's it.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: We weren't really hearing conflicting reports. There were just two
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: different situations. We had another one that involved a cat
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: that was deployed at a park outside of a Soviet
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: compound in Washington, d C. And it was used to
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: eavesdrop on a Russian operative or politician. That's the information
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: that's not super clear, because this stuff is kind of hearsay,
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: and you'll hear things like a head of state or
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: operative of some kind.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: But the story there is that they dropped the cat
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: out of the van and then it was immediately run
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: over by a taxi. Yeah, so sad. That is sad.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: It's also a bummer. I bet all the gadgets and stuff.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: Whoever had the headphones on, I was listening to the
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: cat transmissions.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Oh no, that's probably.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: Take them off, you know. Let's get on to imagine that.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: So there's let's say there's another aspect of possible subter future,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: which I really appreciated. I imagine you did too. We
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: may not ever know the entirety of AB's experiments because
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: their records were destroyed in a fire in nineteen eighty nine,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: and when Vanderbilt the Smithsonian journalist wrote to the CIA
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: to ask about this stuff, they turned Yep, they turned
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: them down because.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: We weren't even going to acknowledge the existence of those
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: records in the first place, or even if the program
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: existed practically. I mean, it's very hush hush stuff, you know,
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: for good reason. One document they did find, however, referenced
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: a section called views on Trained Cats, very very severely
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: redacted documents censored. Right, yeah, in the National Security Archive
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: at George Washington University.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: Right. I love that this is a title for an
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: official government document. Somebody, somebody is paid to sit down
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: and think, think it through. What are my views? That's
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: sort of like views on Trained Cats. There are different perspectives.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: There's some critical theory at play. It ultimately concludes, at
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: least from the unredacted parts that we're aware of, ultimately
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: concludes that the cats can be trained to move short distances.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: But the program doesn't doesn't pan out in a practical sense,
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: And a lot of.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: These things that we're talking about were really replaced by
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: more practical technological advances, you know, in the same way
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: a lot of old school spycraft has been supplanted, Like
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: you don't have to sit in a park with a
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: suitcase with a reeled a real tape recorder and and
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: a wire running up your legs so that you can
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: turn it on and off when someone starts to talk.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: In the same way, it's probably not the most.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: Practical thing in the world to train animals to spy
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: on people when we have like you know, ultrasonic listening devices. Sure,
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: you know all kinds of technology that goes way over
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: my head.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: No, we can't end the episode without mentioning the squab Squad.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: The Squab Squad is my favorite part in this Smithsonian article.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: This this this reporter went really.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Deep with this guy Bailey and really got some good
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: stories out of him. And the best one involved they
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: actually had a like a ranch that was active constantly
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: while the IQ Zoo was still doing its thing, and
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: they have these like like storefront like fake facade town
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: kind of like like you'd see in an old Western
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: where it was just the front of a building set up,
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: and they would run these different scenarios with pigeons where
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: they would get them we needed like the theyould get
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: directives from head from home home base from HQ be
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: like we need to get into this type of building to.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: This inter interior room, et cetera.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: And they would like move the pieces around that they
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: had and simulate kind of like the type of situation
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: that the bird would ultimately be involved in down the
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: road when the mission was live.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: And they also did stuff in the field.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Didn't they Yeah, they did actually take the show on
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: the road. So, according to Bailey, who's not super specific
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: about this, for various reasons, ravens were brought to sensitive locations,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: and he said, we got the cats into places usually
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: this is very interesting, usually using diplomatic pouches. A diplomatic
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: pouch is something that can't be searched, typically nowhere near
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: as easily. I mean, it's for transmission of highly confidential
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: or classified materials documents, and so they smuggled ravens through them.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: Apparently.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: He admits they carried a raven on a commercial flight
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: in a map case under the front seat, and based
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: on the way he describes this, he says, every now
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: and then the raven would make a noise and then
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: he would shift in his seat. So I feel like
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: he was trying to play those raven noises off as.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: Farts, Yeah, or maybe just you know, squeak chair squeaking, Yeah,
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: that sounds like farts sometimes, or maybe just kind of like, oh,
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: that's what I do, and I squirm.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: So the only one whom I alone?
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: There? No, I think I think we're I think you're
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: not alone, man, We're both we're both sound effect people.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: That's very true.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Also, there is a real world scenario of this verse.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: We have to emphasize dolphins. Military dolphins are still a thing.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: They're real thing. They're out there. We found a story
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and five from The Guardian by writer
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: named Mark Townsend detailing the story of a dolphin named
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Flipper who was let loose and the aftermath of Hurricane
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Katrina and was considered armed and dangerous.
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: What did he have one of those air cannons on
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: his head? So yes, so he did to shoot out
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: t shirts. Here's the thing.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: Dolphins were usually controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: but they were missing in action. They were mia for
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: a second and an accident investigator named Leo Sheridan had
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: received confidential information confirming these dolphins had escaped during after
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: the hurricane, and he said the following. My concern is
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: that they have learned to shoot at divers in wet
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: suits who have simulated terrorists and exercises. If divers or
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber, and
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: if equipped with special harness carrying toxic darts so not
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: compressed air, they can fire they're designed the darts, that is,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: to put a target to sleep so they can be
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: interrogated later. But what happens if the victim's not found
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: for hours? So we're back again. No'll imagine you've just
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: survived a hurricane, right, You're you're trying to relax, You
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: go for a swim off the gulf, and then you
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: hear this squeeze, this high age squeeze of death.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: Not of joy, not a delightful flippers sound Ben.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: Have you read that comic about that secret, top secret
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: animal program WE three?
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: We three? Yeah, yes, that This really makes me think
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: of that. If the listeners, if you haven't.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: Read WE three, it's a quickie and it's it's heart wrenching,
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: its heartbreak. It's wonderful. But it's about like a cat,
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: a rabbit and a dog. And then I think there's
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: a super dog that they train to come after them.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: But they escape from this program and they're wearing these
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: kind of suits and they're trained to kill, but they're
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: live their animals, and they they act like animals, They
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: communicate with each other like animals. It's kind of closest
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: thing to like Watership Down. It's like a sci fi
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: watership down home vibe, Boy, is it good?
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Don't read it if it's your first time. Don't read
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: it in public. Read it at home in a place
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: where you can tear up quietly. But I'm really glad
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: that you pointed that when out No, because that is
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: just a fantastic story. And in many ways this is
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: a fantastic story. And we, you know, we want to
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: be clear. As we said at the top of the show,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: you're going to hear a lot of allegations of animals
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: being used as spies, and many of them seem to
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: be hysteria. Also, oddly enough, many of them seem to
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: come from Middle Eastern countries. Did you notice that?
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: I did notice that, And in fact, we have a
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: very current example of that out of Iran, don't we been?
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, the story of lizard spies. So, according to
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Iranian military advisor Hassan through is a body, lizards were
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: lurking around in uranium mines, attracting quote, atomic waves and
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: delivering intel on the government to Israel. They were lizards
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: and chameleons, and this military advisor said that the lizard's
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: skin was capable of attracting atomic waves.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: So, in other words, they were like canary and a
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: coal mine type situation. You would bring this atomic wave
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: attracting lizard and it would, like dowsing rod style, lead
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: you to the uranium mines.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: I guess so, And this is February fourteenth of this year.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: You know, as you said, this is very very recent.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to check out entirely, because you know,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: why are they in a cave if they're cold blooded?
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: Well is what he says.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: He says, several years ago, some individuals came to Iran
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: to collect aid for Palestine. We were suspicious of the
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: route they chose. In their possessions were a variety of
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: reptile desert species like lizards and chameleons. We found out
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: that their skin attracts atomic waves and that they were
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: nuclear spies who wanted to find out where inside the
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Islami Republic of Iran we have uranium minds and where
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: we are engaged in atomic activities. He also said that
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: the spy agencies failed every time.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: So very strange story, very strange story. So I wanted
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: to ask you before we before we end the show,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: what if you could have an animal assistant, an animal
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: spy familiar? Yeah, what would it be? And don't feel
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: like you have to limit yourself to real world conditions.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: If you wanted to talk, that's cool too, Like what
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: would you want?
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know, man, I'm not really I don't like
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: a lot of animals. They squigged me out, man. I
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: like cats, dogs. I tolerate cats. I tolerate really, but
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: they kind of leave me alone mainly. So so you'd
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: want a cat, I'd want a cat.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: You want your cat?
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: I want my cat to be a spy talk Okay.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: Boy, listeners, you must think I'm a real curmudgeon. No,
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: you know, I have my moments.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Nobody thinks that.
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: Give on. Somebody online said that we were delightfully corny.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: You know what, We'll take it.
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: I'll take it all day long.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well we'll take that, and we'll also take this
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: show on the road. That's going to wrap it up
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: for today? Oh man?
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: What?
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Oh man?
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: No, it's not happening again?
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: Is it really?
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: Why it's time? Gentlemen?
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, the quizt.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: Can't even mustard energy to say his name.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: I thought we'd seen the last of you.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: He didn't really think that, did you?
• 44:32
  Speaker 5: How could I leave it at a tie, gentlemen, if
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: you do not recall, we are at two and two.
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't recall.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: That's true. So this is the uh, this is the
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: not entirely consensual part of our show, Friends and Neighbors.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: We're in our nemeses. The quizt visits us to test
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: our knowledge of something at least hopefully tangentially related to
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: today's episode.
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: What was what was today's episode?
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: I wasn't listeners mainly about corvids.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: It was about animals and espionage. We did dolphins.
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: I am tangentially related. Two said topic.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: You are tangentially related to corvids, which is true.
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: That is a fact that words can hurt. No, but
• 45:15
  Speaker 5: I have a scenario for the twain of you that's incorrect,
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: but I'm using it anyway. And of course I always
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: have to have some sort of arbitrary rule if you
• 45:29
  Speaker 5: are to ask any follow up questions.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: All coming back to me.
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: All right, yeah, so this today we're going to be
• 45:36
  Speaker 5: talking about World War one France. And considering that we're
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: talking about World War one France and animals, you will
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: have to start any question directed towards me with monsieur
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: quista followed by and I want the accent.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: Okay, I cannot be more.
• 45:56
  Speaker 5: Clear about this, Monsieur quistaar. And then you may ask
• 46:01
  Speaker 5: a question, and then I will answer it. I will
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: point to you and you will start your timer, which
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: is as we have agreed upon in the past three
• 46:09
  Speaker 5: minutes for you to deliberate and ask any follow up
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: questions you need before giving me the answer of whether
• 46:16
  Speaker 5: or not the scenario I present to you is true
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: or I.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: Made it up. Seas, So the counting of the minutes
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: shall be three.
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: Three shall be the accounting of the minutes, and the
• 46:25
  Speaker 5: counting demitts shall be three four. Shalt thou not count,
• 46:28
  Speaker 5: nor either thou count'st two? Accepting that thou then dust
• 46:31
  Speaker 5: proceed to three.
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: Got it?
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: And this thank you for being so very thorough on
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: that note. And this begins after.
• 46:38
  Speaker 5: After the scenario is presented. Yes, because otherwise this is
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: another long one. They've just been getting along. Oh boy,
• 46:45
  Speaker 5: I can't help it. There's a lot of details I
• 46:48
  Speaker 5: have to provide. So you talked about animals an espionage,
• 46:51
  Speaker 5: but animals have also been frequently used by the military.
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: Sometimes animals you would not anticipate would be incorporated into
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: military affairs, sometimes as an unofficial mascot. Sometimes these animals
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: would even receive interesting rewards. Afterwards, they would be promoted
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: to military ranks. This is all true stuff. There's a
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: goat that made the rank of sergeant. But that's not
• 47:19
  Speaker 5: what this one's about. No, gentlemen, here is your scenario.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: That's the one I knew.
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: This is about Monsieur Eerison. In nineteen seventeen, France's army
• 47:30
  Speaker 5: was in a shambles during the Great War. Morale among
• 47:34
  Speaker 5: soldiers was at a low point, and about half of
• 47:38
  Speaker 5: all of France's regiments refused to follow orders to attack.
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: It was the Great French Army Mutiny. One exception was
• 47:47
  Speaker 5: the first regiment of the forty first Division, which bravely
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: followed orders despite suffering heavy losses. The men that division
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: credited their tenacity to their mascot, Monsieur Soon, a European
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: hedgehog who was known to hold his ground bristles out
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: no matter what. After the war, Arison was promoted to
• 48:09
  Speaker 5: the rank of sergeant, even though it was later discovered
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: the monsieur was a mademoiselle.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Begin uh you know what, No, no, no, I'm flying
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: blind with this one. I'm just gonna completely arbitrarily go
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: for true.
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: What you don't even want to debate?
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: We could debate, Yeah, yeah, let's let's okay, so it
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: the misidentification makes it sound a little more plausible.
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: So sure.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: So if that's a lie, that's a that's a clever addition,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: and well done.
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: Monsieur Quista. May I ask you a quick query, Monsieur.
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: Quista, but of course go ahead with your queer age.
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: Can you give me the elevator pitch version? Yours was
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: too long and pedantic, and I have lost the plot.
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: All nineteen seventeen, France's army totally de morezed. One regiment
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: in the forty first Division managed to keep on going,
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: and they credited it. There were other regiments that also
• 49:07
  Speaker 5: kept on going, but they credited their bravery to their mascot,
• 49:12
  Speaker 5: which was a hedgehog that they had named Monsieur Arison
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: and Lynn later after the war promoted Erison to the
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: rank of sergeant because his example gave them bravery through
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: World War One.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: It turned out to be a lady head.
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: It turned out that afterwards, an actual person who bred
• 49:32
  Speaker 5: hedgehog said this is this is not a male hedgehog.
• 49:35
  Speaker 5: Air Monsieur christell we Master Boleyn.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: So did this hedgehog have a rank before?
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: Noa as a mascot? Just apparently someone found it. The
• 49:51
  Speaker 5: actual origins of the hedgehog are somewhat lost to history.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: So here's the signal. I know that, I know that
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: there were, you know, common it was a relatively common
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: practice for mascots to occur in wartime. Sure, you know, usually.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: Dogs monies from time to time.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, So I don't.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: Know if that's true or not. What it seems I
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: rally behind a cute bunny.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I can see that. I can see that. But
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: I'm wondering. I'm wondering if oh gosh, okay, we're down
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: to we're down to just a few seconds.
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: Okay, good, I say true, I say true. Lock in,
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: plump it locks.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: I win. Now.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: Do all the victory tastes so sweet?
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: Oh? Do you savor it? It's like syrup running all
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: over my body. Oh it's so good? All right?
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: Okay, Oh no, no, no, no, I get this.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: I get this.
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: Oh so nice? All right. So, just so you know,
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: the French army, in fact, was in a state of
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: mutiny in nineteen seventeen during World the Great War, they
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: didn't call it World War One at the time for
• 51:03
  Speaker 5: obvious reasons. They were refusing to follow orders. More than
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: about half of all the divisions were refusing to follow orders,
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: largely because the previous campaign did not meet with a
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: success they were promised, and the Americans had recently announced
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: they were joining the war, and a lot of French
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: soldiers had this unrealistic but deeply, deeply optimistic hope that
• 51:29
  Speaker 5: the American soldiers would be joining them immediately, notwithstanding the
• 51:33
  Speaker 5: fact that it takes time to actually ship soldiers across
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: the ocean. So the lack of American soldiers and the
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: lack of success with the previous campaign led to massive
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: desertions and mutinies, and France was just barely able to
• 51:51
  Speaker 5: turn that back around. And they managed to do it by,
• 51:55
  Speaker 5: you know, only having to kill like fifty eight of
• 51:59
  Speaker 5: the deserters.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: So the real the real story is much more grizzly
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: and less hedge.
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: War as hell. Also, by the way, Erison is French.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: For a hedgehog. You are so proud of that one.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: I am really proud.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: I'm proud of you, Jonathan. I'm proud of you too. Yeah,
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: you really really stuck it to us.
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: There, you're taking the joy out of this, Noel.
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, I just like you a lot.
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: This isn't fun and.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: More care for you deeply.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're worried about you in your show.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: You know what though, Hey, this is a this is
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: a this is a chance for a new beginning, isn't it.
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: Guys?
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: We get to refresh, restart, rewind, recycle, reduce, and.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Reuse and remix. My friend. Yes, so we are going
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: to head out. Maybe maybe we'll find a mascot for
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: this show at some point. What do you say?
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: No, yeah, as long as it's not a corvid Okay,
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: all right.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: I don't each their own. And of course we'd like
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: to thank our super produce, Sir Casey. We would like
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: to thank mister Vanderbilt wrote the excellent Smithsonian article. Also
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: thank you Jonathan Quister, You're.
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: Welcome, and of course our regular contributor Lori L.
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: Dove who wrote the.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: Use of Animals and Espionage for How Stuff Works, and
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: our composer Alex Williams, who is also a pal.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: And most importantly you folks, thanks for tuning in. You
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter. You can find us on Instagram.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook. Noel, did you see
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: the emails we've been getting about that Pinterest page.
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: I'm working on it, you guys. I've decided I'm okay
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: with Pinterest. I'm making a dolphin.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: Themed vision board and with some swatches, with some nice
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: little color squares.
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: Just you know, I wanted to I wanted to represent
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: who I am.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like it would have to
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: be a collaborative effort, so we'll have to put our
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: vision boards together at some point. I'm doing a lot
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: of crafty things.
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: I like it.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we hope you like it too. What kind of
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: animal would you want for a spy? Let us know?
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: And what kind of animals should be our mascot.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: You can write to us and tell us any of
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: these things whatever you wish at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, guys, and we'll see you next time
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: for another episode of Ridiculous History. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: to your favorite shows.