Navy Seals*

*Navy Seals, actually Sea Lions.

Yeah, you read that right. The newest plan in Homeland Security? Magical Marine Mammals. The government started training Sea Lions and Dolphins to help “foil terrorism.”

In this article, writers describe a sea lion taking “less than a minute to find a fake mine under a pier near San Fransisco’s AT&T Park.”

(Image Source)

A dolphin located a terrorist lurking in the murky waters and another sea lion, using a device he carried in his mouth, cuffed the faux-terrorist’s ankle so that the authorities could “real him in.”

The animals are known as “Navy Marine Mammals” and are based in San Diego. More than 3,000 responders participate in anti-terrorism training exercises started by Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2004. The Navy’s special animals stole the show this year. The drills at the anti-terrorism training include fake bomb explosions, a hijacking of container ships, and other California-centered disasters.

So why marine mammals?

Tom LaPuzza, spokeman for the Navy Marine Mammals program said this on the subject “Security is of vital importance and humans are very slow in the water. Sea lions can see five times as well. And dolphins can use their sonar to spot items that would take humans days or weeks to find.”

Apparently this program is nothing new, LaPuzza says Dolphins and sea lions were used during both the Vietnam War and Operation Iraqi Freedom. (Though, since Iraq is primarily land locked, I’m not entirely sure how big of an influence our marine mammal friends had on the war effort).

To all the animal rights supporters out there, don’t worry “None of the animals have been harmed in the anti-terrorist work. They never have to carry potentially catastrophic mines.” The article goes on to site that instead of having the animals carry the mines, they find them and place markers so that highly trained Navy divers can retrieve and defuse the devices. Well, good?

Okay, so I know that this isn't really science in the "look at this groundbreaking discovery" sense, or even in the "things you should know about your body/planet/environment/universe that you don't actually know" sense... but it's kind of cool right?

Right.