Military animal

Military animals are trained animals that are used in warfare and other combat related activities. As working animals, different military animals serve different functions. Horses, elephants, camels, and other animals have been used for both transportation and mounted attack. Pigeons were used for communication and photographic espionage. Many other animals have been reportedly used in various specialized military functions, including rats and pigs. Dogs have long been employed in a wide variety of military purposes, more recently focusing on guarding and bomb detection, and along with dolphins and sea lions are in active use today.
Homing pigeons have seen use since medieval times for carrying messages. They were still employed for a similar purpose during World War I and World War II. In World War II, experiments were also performed in the use of the pigeon for guiding missiles, known as Project Pigeon. The pigeon was placed inside so that they could see out through a window. They were trained to peck at controls to the left or right, depending on the location of a target shape.
Some dogs also saw use as messengers.
There is a long-standing tradition of military mascots – animals associated with military units that act as emblems, pets, or take part in ceremonies.
In the years before the First World War pigeon photography was introduced to military intelligence gathering. Although employed during major battles like at Verdun and Somme, the method was not particularly successful. Various attempts in this direction were made during the Second World War as well. A CIA pigeon camera dating from the 1970s is displayed in the CIA Museum; details of CIA missions using this camera are still classified. During the Cold War, the CIA began using ravens and crows for surveillance.
The Acoustic Kitty was a CIA project to use surgically modified cats to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet embassies in the 1960s. Despite expenditure of around $10 million, the project failed to produce practical results and was cancelled in 1967. Documents about the project were declassified in 2001. In 2006, The Independent ran a story that the "Pentagon develops brain implants to turn sharks into military spies".
In 2007, Iranian authorities captured 14 squirrels, which were allegedly carrying spying equipment. The story was widely dismissed in the West as "nuts".
A number of spying scares in the Middle East involved birds. According to Israeli ornithologist Yossi Leshem, Sudanese authorities detained an Egyptian vulture in the late 1970s, and a white pelican in the early 1980s, both carrying Israeli equipment used for animal migration tracking. A more mediatized event was the 2011 capture by a Saudi farmer of a griffon vulture, which was eventually released by the Saudi authorities after they determined that the Israeli equipment it carried was used for scientific purposes. This was followed by international mockery and criticism of the Arab media outlets which uncritically had reported on the bird's alleged role in espionage. In 2012, a dead European bee-eater tagged with an Israeli leg band was found by villagers near the south-eastern Turkish city of Gaziantep. The villagers worried that the bird may have carried a micro-chip from Israeli intelligence to spy on the area. Turkish authorities examined the corpse of the bee-eater and assured villagers that it is common to equip migratory birds with rings in order to track their movements.
Dogs have been used for detecting mines; they were trained to spot trip wires, as well as mines and other booby traps. They were also employed for sentry duty, and to spot snipers or hidden enemy forces.
On land, giant pouched rats such as the Gambian giant pouched rat have been tested with considerable success as specialised mine detecting animals, as their keen sense of smell helps in the identification of explosives and their small size prevents them from triggering land mines.
Chickens were used during the Gulf Wars to detect poisonous gases in an operation called Kuwaiti Field Chicken (KFC); the designation of the US Marines for chickens used in this role was Poultry Chemical Confirmation Devices. The plan was put on hold after 41 of 43 chicken used for such purposes died within a week of arrival in Kuwait.
Beginning during the Cold War, research has been done into the uses of many species of marine mammals for military purposes. The U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program uses military dolphins and sea lions for underwater sentry duty, mine clearance, and object recovery.
Ship's cats were used in the Royal Navy to control vermin on board ships. Able seacat Simon of HMS Amethyst received the Dickin Medal.
During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), Nationalist pilots attached fragile supplies to live turkeys, which descended flapping their wings, thus serving as parachutes which could also be eaten by the defenders of the monastery of Santa Maria de la Cabeza.
Furthermore, use of military chickens was proposed in the British Blue Peacock project. The scheme involved burying nuclear bombs in the ground for later detonation should occupied (West) Germany be overrun by Warsaw Pact forces. The primitive electronic devices of the 1950s were unreliable in frozen ground, and the chickens were considered as a source of biogenic heat. This story has often been reported as an April Fool's joke, but when it was declassified and proven to be a true story on 1 April 2004 (April Fool's Day), the head of education and interpretation at the UK National Archives said, "It does seem like an April Fool but it most certainly is not. The Civil Service does not do jokes."
A secret 1960s CIA project known as Project OXYGAS envisioned dolphin saboteurs trained to attach explosive devices to enemy ships.
In 2019, Hvaldimir, a beluga whale found with a Russian harness, which had a GoPro camera mount but no camera, and the words "Equipment St Petersburg" (written in English) may have been trained as a guard whale or a spy.