Animals have been used in the business of war for centuries, with obvious examples like horse riding and trained search and rescue dogs. But there are some not so obvious examples, like military marine animals. We will do a deep dive into weaponized animals in this article. Dolphins, lionfish, and seals have all been used in various military purposes. Dolphins, the most obvious example, have been used as underwater mine detectors, frogmen (underwater divers) attackers, and explosives carriers. Seals have been used for the same purposes. Lionfish were attempted to be trained to seek out German U Boats, but the problem was they just chased fish and meandered about.
Weapon carrying dolphins have been a hit with the Soviet Union and Russia, as they would strap explosives to dolphins and train them to hunt boats, except they used their own boats for the training, leading to the dolphins tracking down friendly ships and blowing them up. The Russian military claims that after that, they stopped using marine animals as weapons but this beluga whale seems fishy. According to BBC and Newsweek the Iranian military selling its fish soldiers to Ukraine including a white beluga whale, all of which Ukraine has stationed in Crimea. Then Russia annexed Crimea and took the animals. The dolphins refused to defect over to Russia and starved themselves instead. Then the beluga whale escaped to Norway.
On April 29th Norwegian fisherman were reportedly approached by a white beluga whale. This occurrence would not have been rare if the whale had not been wearing a tight harness. The whale approached the boat and appeared to harass the vessel, pulling on ropes and trying to capsize it. When the fishermen removed the harness, on the inside it said: Oborudovanie Sankt-Peterburga (equipment of Saint Petersburg). Scientists suspected that the whale was a part of the Russian program of suicide bomber whales. It could mean that either it was part of the program along time ago an escaped, or that Russia is still using marine animals as weapons of warfare.
By Oliver Angert ’24 and Zachary Dunne ’25
