Hamas claimed this week to have captured an unusual Israeli spy off the coast of Gaza. The militant Palestinian political organization said that the spy dolphin was “stripped of its will” and turned into “a murderer,” according to the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds.
Hamas’ naval forces reportedly noticed “suspicious movements” in the water before discovering the dolphin and bringing it ashore. Al-Quds also said that the dolphin was outfitted with surveillance equipment, as well as a device that made it capable of firing arrows that it said could wound or kill people.
The report also carried the claim that Israeli settlers in the West Bank settlers have used wild pigs and dogs to attack Palestinian farmers and residents.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “Such accusations are nothing new in the Middle East.”
Egyptian authorities accused Israel of sending sharks to its beaches to hurt the Egyptian tourist industry a few years ago. Haaretz also noted that an eagle tagged by Israel was caught by Sudan and deemed to be an Israeli spy.
Hamas’ allegations about the spy dolphin have not been independently verified. While the idea of animal espionage seems like the stuff of sci-fi thrillers not news reports, dolphins, at least, are not incapable of spying.
“It is not so difficult to train dolphins to take pictures and roam around,” Maya Zilber of the Eilat’s Dolphin Reef told the Jerusalem Post. “If human divers can do it, dolphins are also capable, and without as much risk.”
She added that the U.S. and Russia have trained dolphins for military purposes, although they’ve mainly been involved in surveillance and protection efforts — not for attack.
The U.S. Navy’s Marine Mammal Program is currently training 85 dolphins and 50 sea lions to do everything from locate underwater mines to report on the presence of enemy swimmers through a program that receives $14 million a year in funding. Dolphins’ intelligence as well as their use of echolocation — emitting sounds that bounce of nearby objects to offer a read on how far away they are — had made them especially useful when it comes to intelligence operations.
According to at least one Navy SEAL, however, some dolphins have been trained to use equipment that could kill people by head-butting them with a needle that releases an air or gas bubble which could block blood flow and cause death.
Along with the Ukrainian navy vessels that Russian forces acquired after annexing the Crimean peninsula in March 2014, it received the country’s combat dolphins. The Ukraine-trained dolphins are rumored to have been fitted with explosives or harpoons capable of killing.
Ukrainian officials called for the return of the dolphins, noting that the sea creatures were not given the option to either join Russian forces or continue to serve Ukraine in the way that other naval officers were.
“Our specialists developed new devices that convert dolphins’ underwater sonar detection of targets into a signal to the operator’s monitor,” an unnamed Russian source told that country’s news agency, the RIA Novosti. “The Ukrainian navy lacked funds for such know-how, and some projects had to be mothballed.”