Animals as Secret Agents Research Paper

People might have seen animals working as secret agents in movies, but animals have been working for people in real life, too! Although saying "secret agent" does sound like something one would see in a movie, animals were used as spies for the military. Furthermore, animals can help us find out things no one could have without them.  Animals are used as secret agents to communicate with people, and they have abilities that humans don't. 

To start off, some animals were used by people to communicate with others. Ordinarily, people would have been taking messages to others on foot or on horse through a battlefield. Throughout history, people connected messaging and listening devices onto animals. Moreover, birds like pigeons and ravens were better suited for this task. In Secret Agents Among Us, the author addresses that "They carried a small canister with a message inside and were often the only way for soldiers to communicate with their headquarters.". (Gentry 2) “They” being pigeons. Surprisingly enough, they used pigeons to communicate to people. This is because it was too dangerous to simply walk across a battlefield just to deliver a message. Although it isn’t good to put the lives on animals at stake, they were still better for the job. They were also small, it was harder to shoot down. Consequentially, more people were able to receive messages, and lives were saved. Sometimes, people use other animals to deliver messages. Now, think about devices. Is it possible to give an animal a device to listen in on one's conversation? Yes, but in some cases it's not what people think. Unfortunately, a U.S. government team "implanted electronics into the cat's body... A microphone was placed in one of the cat's ears, a small radio transmitter was implanted in the chest, and a thin, wire antenna was woven along it's spine" (Jackson 3), as stated in The Sad Case of Acoustic Kitty. They attached the devices onto the cat to make it move accordingly. Imagine that: Someone connecting a device to control another being. Not only did it harm the cat, but it didn’t do much  Apparently, just giving the cat a small microphone wasn't enough for them.  

Why do people use animals instead of sending people? Think back to the pigeon messengers. Another reason animals were used as secret agents was because they had abilities that us humans don't. Many people know about echolocation, and that animals use it for communicating with each other or finding food, but they were also used to locate things for this reason. In Sea Spies, it is stated that "Some bottlenose dolphins have been trained by the U.S. Navy to detect devices under water. They can flag the presence of anti-ship mines to help chart safe routes for boats." (Jones 1). Because animals can chart these anti-ship mines, lives were saved.  Well, why couldn't they use machines like drones and submarines? This is because back then, technology wasn't very advanced. It was just easier to strap a device onto an animal and train them to help. It was probably more accurate, too, since some animals can go where humans can't. Additionally, if these dolphins weren’t trained, then more people would be at risk. Not only that, but the odds of either side winning would be slim since they’d both be at risk. "During the Cold War, U.S. government animal psychologists trained ravens to eavesdrop on foreign powers... They were also trained to fly to a specific window ledge outside a foreign government office, deposit the slate, and then fly off..." (Gentry 2) This is what the author explained in Secret Agents Among Us. They explain how people trained ravens to spy on people so they knew what their plans were. This is because some places windows were high up, so people couldn't go up there without making noise. Now, think about how quiet ravens are when they fly. It'd be hard to look at a bird and think that these innocent creatures might be here to spy on someone. 

So many animals have been helpful in war, and they should be more recognized for that. Not only can animals be used to communicate to people, but they can also accomplish certain tasks with abilities humans don’t have.. Now does a secret agent sound like fiction? Maybe next time someone looks at an animal, they'll look at it with a different perspective.