5 Fun Facts About Animal Warfare

1. The United States military were planning on using Cat Bombs during World War 2.

As crazy as it sounds, it's true. The plan was simple: Strap a bomb to a cat with a parachute - yep, parachuting bomb cats - and throw the cat out of a plane. It was theorized that cats would guide the bombs down onto an enemy ship, as they hated water and would do anything to avoid landing in it. Luckily, the idea never got out of the testing stages, as the they found the cats tended to pass out during the fall. If successful, each cat would have been used nine times, I suppose.

2. The Russians used dogs to blow up tanks.

There seems to be a thing with using animals to deliver bombs during the Second World War. The Russian army took a lot of time training their dogs to blow up German tanks. They spent months teaching the dogs to run underneath the tanks with a bomb strapped to their backs. The training consisted of placing treats beneath the tank, so the dogs got used to running underneath them. Originally, the dog would leave the bomb and it would be detonated by a timer. This proved unworkable, so they abandoned the idea in favour of detonating the bomb with the dog still strapped to it. Sheesh on a leash. That is just evil. However, when they put the idea into practice on the battlefield, they found the dogs were so used to getting the rewards from beneath Russian tanks, that they left the German ones alone, and blew up their own tanks.

3. The Pigeon Guided Missile.

Someone needs to start asking questions about the sanity of these people. This one, though, was actually one of the more successful of the Animal Bombs. The idea was simple. A pigeons was placed inside the nose of a missile and trained to peck at a target on the screen. If the pigeon pecked at the centre of the screen, it remained on target. If the pigeon pecked elsewhere, the screen would tilt, altering the missile's flight path. This accurately steered the missile towards the target ship. However, the idea was abandoned in favour of newer technology, and because the military were sure they would be made fun of if they went ahead with Project Pigeon.

4. Holy Bat Bombs, Batman. Yep, seriously, these scientists need to stop finding ways to blow up animals. It was the United States again who decided cruelty to animals was okay. I'd like to say this idea was simple. But, not so much. First they needed a bomb-shaped casing, hollowed out with a thousand compartments inside. Secondly, they needed bats. Thirdly, they needed small timer-controlled incendiary devices. Fourthly, they strapped the incendiary bombs to the bats and placed them inside the compartments. The device would be dropped from a plane and a parachute would be deployed. At a certain altitude above a town the bats would be released and would find some attics, wooden eaves, a Burger King, or the underside of a tramp, to make bed-time-rest-go-sleepy-bye-byes. The incendiary bombs would explode and start fires all over town. The result was flying-fire-zombie-bats, so the project was cancelled.

5. Elephants were dropped from planes to squash enemy soldiers.

Nah, that's not true. They used hippos. Nope, not even hippos. However, Russian biologist, Il'ya Ivanovich Ivanov, try saying that ten times when you've had a bottle of wine or three, tried to create a hybrid human/ape. Yep, you heard right -- a Man-Ape. He set up a lab in Africa, funded by the Soviet Government, and started experimenting on animals. He hoped, along with Stalin, to develop a stronger, better soldier for the battlefield. Ivanov started by impregnating chimps with human sperm. This didn't work. Next up, inseminate human women with chimp sperm. However, his plans were scuppered by the local government who were horrified when they heard of his experiments. Ivanov stole twenty apes and fled back to Russia. Most of the apes died on the journey back. As far as we know, his experiments were unsuccessful. There are no half human/half ape super soldiers kicking around. Or, are there?

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