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Short Stuff: Dolphin Detectors · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to these short stuff. There's Chuck, there's Josh,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: that's me, and there's Jerry over there. Uh, no time
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to talk any further. Let's get started. We're talking about
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: dolphins disarming by Are you gonna do that every time
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: as long as I get a laugh out of you? Yeah,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: I will laugh every time. Well, then every time it
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: is because I'm laughing, because then we do this and
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: it takes more time than it does. I hadn't thought
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, maybe I will stop doing that because
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I really do feel like pressed for time, Like you
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: can see him perspiring across the top of my lip. Hey,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: let me try Josh Clark introw. Okay, hey, Josh, have
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: you ever seen a dolphin? Yes? I have, Chuck feels
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: like it does. It's kind of exhilarating. Yeah, especially when
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: you know that that the other person has seen or
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: done or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, you're in the club. So
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: we've both seen dolphins. We have. Uh, and I knew
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: about this. Uh. What we're talking about here is the
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: fact that the U. S. Navy uses dolphins to find
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: unexploded underwater ocean minds, right, And I knew about this,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: but uh, you know it was kind of cool just
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: to see how exactly this works. It was well also
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: to think a lot of people have the impression that
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: the dolphins are there, like you know, they're sweating themselves,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: they're wiping sweats from their their brows. They're disarming these
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: minds right like by like my flipper can't even hold
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: these plyers right or was it the green wire or
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the red wire I'm supposed to clip? But that's all right,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: that's not the case at all. They don't actually disarm
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: the minds. They don't even really get that close to it.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: What they do is they go find minds for like
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: the U. S. Navy. It's not just the U. S.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Navy that does this. Apparently, um Russia captured Ukraine's dolphin
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: patrol in Crimea and the Crimean War. Recently they used
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Dolph Landgren. He can't swim, terrible joke. He sings like
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: a stone. He he does. He doesn't like you would
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: be a swimmer, does he? He know he's too he's
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: got too much like muscle, you know, which I mean
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: sounds counterintuitive, but yeah, he does look like he would
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: sink for sure. Uh yeah, So what do you say
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Russians use him. I'm sure other people do too. Rite
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of people do. And again it's they're not
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: using them to disarm the mind. They're using them to
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: find minds. And the reason they use dolphins to find
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: minds is because there are um there's no technology that
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: we have that comes even close to rivaling a dolphins
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: ability to find something in very murky water with a
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: lot of loud acoustic noise and um that that may
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: be disguised to look like something else. And minds fall
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: under all three of those categories. Yeah, so what a
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: dolphin does and we'll get to how they do it,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: But they are trained to do this specifically with just
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: like they would be at uh at stinky old Sea
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: World with like you know, fish is their real board
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: to do their little tricks. But they learned to search
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: for these mines. Find one and like you said, they
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: could be like fifty ft away. It's not like they
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: have to go knock on it or anything like that,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: and it probably wouldn't explode anyway. Um. So they go
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: find one, they swim back to the boat and ring
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: a bell or you know, some sort of signifier that
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: they've worked out. They set off a firework, they shoot
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: a flare at the captain. Uh. And then the human says,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: all right, good job. Your work is not quite done though,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: because all you're doing is saying there's something down there.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Now here is a uh, an acoustic transponder, and uh,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: you go take this. He puts it in his little fist,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: and then the dolphins swims back to the mine and
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: now they have you know, it's like it's a transponder,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: so they actually know where it is now, right, And
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: then they come back and they get the fish, which
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: is really what they're they're kind of after. If you
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: remember our Star Dogs episode, it's it's kind the thing
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: like they're after a fish. They know if they go
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: do this, they'll get a fish. And people think dolphins
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: are smart. They don't. They're dumb because they don't realize
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: there's fish everywhere in that ocean. So, chuck, how how
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: would a dolphin do this kind of thing? Why is
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: a dolphins so much so, so vastly superior to anything
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: that humans can come up with technology wise? Well, humans
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: are pretty good at coming up with technology. Frankly, that
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: is correct. But um, we use sonar, and they use sonar.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: But they've been using sonar a lot longer than we've
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: been using sonar. That's the point of this article. That
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: really is sort of it. Like they mean, dolphins have
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: been around way longer than we've been using sonar, and
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: that's there their chief I mean, I guess it's sort
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: of a communication device. Oh yeah, definitely is. They communicate,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: But it's also the way that they see I guess
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: it's the best way you could put it. They see
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: what they're there, well, they don't have ears. They see
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: with we normally, what might think of these things that
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: we might hear? Yeah, and that's why it's so tough
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: to kind of wrap your head around what they're doing.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: But if you think about it, if if our vision
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: is nothing but a bunch of electrical impulses stimulated by
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: light that forms like a mental conception of an object
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: in our brain, that's exactly what dolphins are doing. But
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: they're doing it with sound. They're shooting out like a
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: kind of thing, and when it comes back, it tells
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: them about that object and it forms an impression in
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: their brain just like we do. Visually. They do orally,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: but not through the mouth, I mean orally a a
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: really well put uh yeah, and supposedly they are so
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: good at this kind of echolocation that they can tell
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: the difference from fifty feet away between a BB gun
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: pellet being dropped in the water and a kernel of
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: corn being dropped in the water. Yeah, which is again,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: now we're starting to reach the point where it's like, Okay,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: now I see why they're so much better than than
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: our technology. Like, I can see that. I could if
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: you put a baby in a corner of a kernel
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: of corn next to each other fifty ft away, I
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: can do that. I can see that. But if the
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: visibility underwater, sure could, all right, if the visibility underwater
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: is like two ft in front of your face, you
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: couldn't do that. A dolphin could, which is why they
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: come in handy, right. And so we talked about echo
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: location with bats before. Uh, and I feel like with
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: something else, but definitely with bats. That was one of
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: our great long form episodes, probably whales Whales episode, Yeah,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: probably so. But dolphins used the same process. Um, they
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: use their nasal passages and they make that little clicking
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: sound that you did so well. Uh, they send it
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: to the forehead and that focuses the sound into like
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: a beam that shoots out into the water. Let's step one. Yeah,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: and then what happens after that, well after that because
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: it's echo location, you know, it works just like with
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: the bats. Things bounce off and come back to them. Uh.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: In case of bats, it's you know, mosquitoes and things
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: like that, or or stupid humans with tennis rackets. Um,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: it bounces back to the dolphin as that echo and
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: then they absorb that into their jaw like a tennis racket,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: like it's oh no, poor dolphin, poor dolphin. Uh. And
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: this part is kind of gross sounding, but there is
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: a um what Jane McGrath referred to as a passage
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: of fat in the jaw, and that's just really just
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: a conductor that conducts the sound to the inner ear
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: of the dolphin, which and then all the nerve impulses
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: get going and then the brain starts firing. And like
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: you said, just like we see something, they can say, wow,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: that thing is around like a bb or it's shaped
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: kernel shaped like a corn kernel, or where they go, hey,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: it's a c mine that things are gonna blow. I better,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: or that's a fish. I don't even need to go
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: back to the boat, right, I can eat so chuck, Um,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: let's take an ad break and then we will come
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: back and we'll talk about how not everybody's super hip
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: with the idea of using dolphins in war. Okay, we're back,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: and like I said, not everybody is really happy that
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: the U. S. Navy is using dolphins. And actually, I
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: should say, real quick, Chuck, I want to fit this in. Um. Oh,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't have even said I wanted to fit it in.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: That's using up valuable time. So I the Navy started
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: using dolphins quite by accident. I guess in nineteen sixty
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: there was a study where they started paying attention to dolphins.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: They started to study them, like I just said, and um,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: they were trying to figure out if they could learn
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: anything from offense to make torpedoes more I guess aqua
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: dynamic so that they could move through the water horse
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: you look to a dolphin, right, And they didn't learn
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: anything for torpedoes, but they were like, wait, these things
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: are super smart and they have amazing echo location. Maybe
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: we should figure out something else for him. And they
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: put them into use. Um pretty shortly after that they
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: started training them. They said, they're pretty smart. But here's
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: the hitch. They don't realize they're surrounded by fish in
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: the ocean, right, They think they can only get them
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: from this stupid bucket on the boat. It's also possibly
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: just really lazy. Maybe maybe like if I had, like
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I can go to a grocery store, but if I
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: had if I was laying on the couch and someone
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: dropped by and dropped food in my mouth, right exactly
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: all over it. Yeah, that's a really good analogy. I
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: get it now. So um, alright, First of all, we
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: we already said that they don't disarm them, and they
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: don't even get that close. So you might think that
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: even animal rights activists would be like, hey, this is fine.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: They're not getting close even if they did. Like I
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: said before, they're not going to explode, because they're meant
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: to explode when a ship hits it, not you know,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: any octopus kind of floating by, because that would defeat
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: the purpose of putting a mine in the ocean. Right. Uh.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: So you would think like, all right, what's the harm then,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: But it turns out there actually is quite a bit
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: of harm that could that could come about. Yeah, because
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: if you have a trained team of dolphins that you
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: know you're using in one place, say the Atlantic, and
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: you suddenly need them over in the Pacific. You gotta
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: get them from point A to point B and there's
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: there's Dolphins may not be acclimated to the Pacific, especially
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: if it's like the Northern Pacific and it's super cold
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: and they're used to the Middle Atlantic where it's relatively warm. Right,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: That's one thing. Another thing is transporting them there alone
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: is an ordeal for the dolphins. Yeah. I mean, anyone
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: who's ever seen a whale or a dolphin or a
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: big shark like wrapped up in that that sling being
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: like lifted out of the ocean into a plane or
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: something to a tank. It's just like it looks awful.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Nothing about that makes it look like that any of
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: those animals are psyched that that's happening. Right. Air travel
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: is designed for humans, and it's a nightmare for humans, right,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Imagine what it's like for a dolphin. Yea, at some
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: points a lot of stress on their body and there
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: you know, it might sound hippie dippie, but on their
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: emotional well being, you know, on their earth spirit and
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: well we've talked about zukos. This it's a real thing.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure, for sure, And I would imagine
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: that if you want to drive a dolphin insane, there
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: are worse ways to do that than putting it on
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: an airplane taking it for a ride about. And there
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: were um, there was actually uh, they were going to
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: use some dolphins as part of a dolphin sea lion team.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Sea lion or seal. One of the two. Think we'll
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: sea lions do this as well. Then it was a
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: dolphins sea lion team. They actually have can There are
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: naval teams made up of sea lions and dolphins work
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: together that not only discover minds, they're also trained to
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: discover like underwater saboteurs, divers swimmers who aren't supposed to
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: be there that want to like blow up a military station.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: And the dolphin will go find the guy, go tell
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: the sea lion. The sea lion goes and puts an
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: ankle cuff on the swimmers shut up, I'm not kidding,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: and they're tethered to a boat now like so the
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: sea lion goes and arrests the guy and then they
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: both go tell the navy that you got you got
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: someone on the line. So the dolphins doing like some
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: trick in front of the guy and he's like, wow,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know I'm supposed to plant this bomb,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: but that's pretty neat looking. And then he looks down
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: and he's like, oh again dolphins and then the sea
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: lion and the dolphin high five. Yeah, but that's so.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: They were going to set up a patrol in the
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: in Puget Sound in Washington State. There's an army port there,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: and uh, they were going to set up patrols, and
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: the I think some animal rights group said nope, not
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: on our watch, and to raise public awareness, they started
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: knitting sweaters for the dolphins. We're going to be transported
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: to the to the cold water. And it worked for
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: a little while. I think that that they have those
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: things now, yeah, I'm sure there's a work around. So
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: that's that is dolphins disarming minds, which they don't actually do.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Correct the dolphins find the minds and h and many
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: many people are still not too supportive of that, right, yeah,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: because I mean they're innocence and they have no idea
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: what the wars, what's going on with the war. You know,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: they don't know what they're being used for. It's just
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: it's a moral quandary for sure. Yeah. The one thing
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I couldn't find really quick before we go is what
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: minds are disguised as. One thing I saw. The only
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: thing I saw was that they can be disguised to
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: appear like ripples in the water. And I'm like, how
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: would you do that? And then I realized, oh, i'm
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: sonar it would look like a ripple in the water.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: So I think they were talking about disguising them. I'm
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: sure they do visually as well, but I think mostly
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: on sonars how they try to disguise on interesting. Yeah,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: I would love to meet the person who's like, I
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: know how to disguise the mind as a ripple in water. Yeah,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: that makes more sense. I was thinking like they would
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: make it look like a big floating kelp mass. Yeah,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: so was I at first. And they might, but I
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: couldn't find anything like that. I was the only thing
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: for him. Very nice. Uh. Well, if you want to
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: know more about dolphins disarming sea mines, hang around in
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: the sea. See what happens. Uh, And in the meantime,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: get in touch with us. You can send us an
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff works dot com.