Whales, dolphins, pigeons, crows, cats, and rats have been or are being used by nations for surveillance and intelligence gathering.
The famous beluga whale nicknamed Hvaldimir was found dead in late August in waters off Risavika port in southwestern Norway. Animal protection organizations initially suspected it had been shot, but an autopsy later dismissed this theory. Authorities discovered a stick lodged in Hvaldimir’s mouth, suggesting the cause of death might have been a bacterial infection resulting from the wound.
Hvaldimir first attracted global attention in 2019 when it appeared off the Norwegian coast wearing a harness equipped with a camera labeled "St. Petersburg Equipment." This led to Western speculation that the whale was part of a Russian Navy program training marine animals for espionage, though Moscow has never confirmed such claims.
The whale’s name is a combination of "hval," meaning "whale" in Norwegian, and "Vladimir," a common name in Russia. Some theories suggest Hvaldimir may have been trained to assist in therapy for disabled children, but it continues to be labeled as a "spy whale."
The success of using marine animals for espionage is hard to evaluate, but pigeons have proven to be formidable military spies. These birds have been used for mail delivery for centuries, including during wartime. In World War I, German forces employed pigeons for surveillance by attaching specialized cameras to them.
Pigeons continued to play a similar role during World War II. From 1941 to 1944, British intelligence deployed 16,000 pigeons into Nazi-occupied Europe. About 1,000 returned to London, carrying small capsules with messages written by civilians in occupied territories, mostly detailing German troop movements and new weaponry.
Declassified documents reveal that in the 1970s, the CIA deployed pigeons equipped with miniature cameras to capture images of sensitive sites in the Soviet Union. The CIA also trained crows to place listening devices on window ledges.
In the 1960s, the CIA developed a project called Acoustic Kitty, aiming to implant microphones in cats’ ears to secretly record conversations, particularly of Soviet diplomats and spies. The agency believed cats, as common pets, would arouse no suspicion in public or private spaces.
However, cats proved difficult to control. During field tests, the CIA could not direct the cats to specific locations, as they wandered wherever they pleased. The project was ultimately canceled in 1967 after costing $20 million.
The CIA also experimented with using dead animals. During the Cold War, its Technical Services Office proposed using dead rats as containers for secret messages, which agents could retrieve. The rat carcasses were preserved and hollowed out to store notes, photographs, or film. The idea relied on the assumption that most people avoid dead rats, reducing the risk of exposure.
Field tests revealed an unforeseen problem: while humans avoided dead rats, cats did the opposite, often carrying them off before CIA agents could recover the hidden materials. To counter this, the CIA tried soaking the rat carcasses in spicy sauce and chili oil to make them less appealing to cats, but with limited success. Eventually, the agency found that using wormwood oil was the most effective solution.
(Sources: Al Jazeera, AFP)
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