Forget James Bond and his high-tech gadgets – the history of global espionage is actually more like a zoo. For decades, the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies have been quietly looking to the animal kingdom to pull off their top-secret missions.
From the heights of the Cold War to modern nuclear standoffs, military masterminds have tried turning everything from household pets to wild predators into covert operatives. Some were equipped with state-of-the-art microphones and hidden cameras, while others were completely mechanical lookalikes built to blend seamlessly into enemy territory.
Of course, when your secret agents have minds of their own, things rarely go completely to plan. For every brilliant breakthrough, there has been a chaotic, tragic, or downright bizarre blunder in the field. Here, we look at some of the craziest critters ever employed for covert operations.
Coo-vert Operations
In the 1970s, during the Cold War, the CIA trained intelligent ravens to drop listening devices on window ledges of Soviet HQs, and carry out photo missions using cameras in their beaks. Sadly their best candidate Do Da was killed by other birds. A similar project saw them fail to train a cockatoo for espionage.
During both World Wars and the Cold War, the Allies used cameras strapped to pigeons to take pictures of targets and fly back. They were also used in World War Two by spies to send intelligence back from behind enemy lines about German V1 rocket sites.
In 2011 officials in Saudi Arabia detained a griffon vulture for “spying”, saying that it was carrying an Israeli GPS transmitter. Israel said it was part of a project studying the bird’s movements.
Secret Squirrels
In 2007 the Iranians arrested a team of 14 “spy squirrels” apparently equipped with recording devices, found near a nuclear plant. In 2018 they also accused the US of spying on nuclear facilities with chameleons and lizards.
The MI5 trained gerbils to sniff out spies in airports as the creatures can detect a rise in adrenalin, released in sweat, through stress. It failed because they couldn’t distinguish between agents and people just scared of flying. CIA agents once used hollowed out rats as “dead drops” hiding places.
During World War One dogs carried messages with vital intelligence through the trenches. One, called Satan, was fitted with a gas mask before dodging German bullets to get a message to troops at Verdun.
Sounds Fishy
In 2019 a mysterious beluga whale was dubbed a spy when it appeared off Norway’s coast wearing a Russian harness. The CIA have experimented with attaching sensors to dolphins to collect the sounds of nuclear submarines and, in the 1990s invented Charlie, a radio-controlled robotic catfish fitted with a microphone to spy on enemy craft.
The CIA also used cats as clandestine agents, wiring one up with a microphone to spy on the Soviet embassy in Washington DC in the 1960s. However, the moggy used in Operation Acoustic Kitty was sadly run over by a taxi on its first mission in the field. The project was scrapped.
In 1974 the US intelligence agency also developed an Insectothopter, a dragonfly-style drone able to travel 650ft for 60 seconds via remote control, with a tiny microphone concealed in its head.
During the Napoleonic Wars a French ship sank off the coast of Hartlepool. The only survivor was a monkey. Legend has it that the locals tried and hanged it as a spy.
For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.