Russia’s military is recruiting dolphins, and their mission is a mystery

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Russia’s military is looking for a few good dolphins to join its navy – five, to be exact, with perfect teeth, average length and a willingness to “display motor activity.”

That’s according to a Defense Ministry tender that was published online this week. It offered about $24,000 to a broker who could supply three male and two female bottlenose dolphins, each about eight feet long, for the service of the Russian state.

The notice, which was described by the state-run TASS news agency before it was apparently taken down, did not indicate what military duty the dolphins would be expected to perform, nor why they need good teeth. But it rekindled speculation that the Russian navy is reviving the combat dolphin units that served as Soviet spies, investigators, rescuers – and possibly even assassins – during the Cold War.

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But the Soviet dolphin secret agents were also trained as killers, according to some accounts. Viktor Baranets, a retired Russian colonel, told the Guardian this week that they planted explosive devices on enemy ships. The dolphins’ trainer told the BBC in 2000 that the animals were fitted with harpoons that they used to stab enemy swimmers and carried out kamikaze attacks on foreign vessels. “The dolphins could allegedly distinguish foreign and Soviet submarines by the sound of their propeller,” the BBC wrote. Doug Cartlidge, a former dolphin trainer, told Wired in 2007 that he had visited the Crimea dolphins after they were decommissioned. He said he was told that they were sometimes armed with needles connected to carbon dioxide cylinders, a poke from which could be lethal, and that they’d learned to parachute out of helicopters.

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