For todays free post I wanted to elaborate a little more on something that I discovered while doing my last post. In my last post I found a short YouTube video about zoology staring a professional zoologist. In the video he talks about how he used to train dolphins for the Navy. I had never heard of something like this before and was very intrigued. I was kind of worried that this might be something dangerous or scary for the dolphins. I remember a while back hearing something about how in the olden days, they would strap bombs to dolphins and send them over to enemy ships to set them off. You can imagine with this image in my head that I would be a little hesitant to look at this subject more. However, I was to interested not to do a little research. What I stumbled upon turned out to be much more humane and very intriguing.
I discovered that the US Navy actually has a Marine Mammal Program where they employ dolphins and sea lions for their diving and sensory capabilities. With the seals good eye site and the dolphins echolocation, they are good at swimming through murky waters and finding things like sea mines and mark and retrieve items for divers. At first I was a little nervous when they said sea mines, the things that explode underwater to destroy ships, but it turns out that those are made with marine mammals in mind so dolphins are not harmed by them. They are made to go off if they are hit by a large ship, not swaying from the water or from sea animals. The site also debunked the rumor about dolphins being used by the Navy to harm or injure humans or carry weapons for that same perpous at any time in history. the animals are never used for attack missions. I was very happy to discover this. The Navy is also held to the same standards as other facilities with marine mammals for the health and care of the animals.
As cool as this is, and even though the animals must be treated humanly according to the law, is it really right to make these wild animals work like this for us? They are treated well and kept safe while on duty, but at the same time, these are wild animals. They are doing a great service for us with the duties they perform. It is not really a black and white issue; there are a lot of different things that must be taken into consideration. It is really up to individuals the kind of opinion they have on organizations such as this one.
Work Cited:
US Government. "Marine Mammal Program." US Navy Marine Mammal Program. US Navy, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
This was a really interesting post. I have never heard of the navy using dolphins to their advantage. I was wondering a few things when reading this post. How do they train dolphins to help benefit them? How do dolphins not set off the mines? And I wonder how much money the navy blows trying to train dolphin.
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