This is an I-Heart podcast.

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Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here.

Animals, for better or for worse, have a long history as faithful allies to humans in war zones. Perhaps the most notable of

the battlefield animals is the horse, which throughout human history has aided soldiers during combat.

And to this day, militaries still train dogs to guard sites and soldiers, find explosives,

and conduct search and rescue. But still another animal

aids the military by going where dogs and horses can't. Underwater. Undersea mines have been

responsible for sinking or damaging many ships since World War II. More ships have been damaged from mines than from all other causes combined, including

active enemy attacks.

Beginning in the 1960s, the U.S. Navy's Marine Mammal Program started training

bottlenose dolphins to find explosive mines underwater, as well as other suspicious objects.

The dolphins don't disarm or explode the mines, but rather locate the minds for humans to

subsequently disarm or mark for avoidance, all without putting the dolphin in any substantial

danger. Trainers, using fish as a reward and ignoring incorrect behaviors, teach the dolphins to spot

suspicious man-made metal objects from far away.

A dolphin learns to search for mines, and upon finding one, swims back up to the trainer's

boat to poke an appropriate signifier, like a ball with its nose.

The humans then give the dolphin a boy,

or a special device known as an acoustic transponder, which the animal leaves in the area where it spotted the mine. An acoustic transponder produces a distinct sound that allows human divers

to find it later. During the Cold War, the then-classified marine

...