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

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