Reportedly was caught by Hamas operatives as it was making suspicious movements off the coast of Gaza. When Hamas combat divers (I had no idea they had such a thing) examined the dolphin spy, they said it was strapped with a camera, a monitoring device and an spear shooting contraption capable of killing a human.

That is one deadly-ass dolphin.

Hamas thinks the dolphin was there to track their frogmen’s training as part of an ongoing intelligence operation to support Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.

While a spy dolphin sounds completely insane, this is not the first time Israel has been accused of pitting the animal kingdom against its enemies. According to there has been a long history of accusations, some totally absurd, that Israel has animal warriors on their side:

In 2013, Egyptian police were reported to have temporarily detained a duck, after a local fisherman saw a device with Hebrew writing attached the bird, believing that it could be used to gather intelligence. In 2012, Turkish media repeatedly alleged that birds tagged with tracking devices by Israeli universities were being used for espionage missions.

Also in 2012, a vulture with an Israeli tag was captured in Sudan, and touted to be a Mossad spy. Israeli officials had to explain that only the vulture itself was being tracked, as part of a study on the migration patterns of the rare species. In 2011, some Saudi Arabian media accused Israel of using a griffon vulture for espionage purposes. In 2010, an official in Egypt’s Sinai province said that rumors of Mossad dumping a shark in the Red Sea near tourist areas deserved serious investigation.

Although there are no known reports of trained sea mammals working for the IDF, the use of dolphins and sealions for military purposes is not unheard of. The U.S. has maintained a marine mammal program dating back to the 1960s and today the animals are used to defend critical infrastructure from swimmer attacks, to locate sunken equipment and to identify mines and underwater explosive devices.

U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Teams can be deployed anywhere in the world in 72 hours via fixed wing transport and helicopters. As for their armament and gear, it remains a mystery, although cameras have been seen on U.S. Navy dolphins along with elaborate muzzle-like devices and rumors of dart systems used to attack enemy swimmers have existed, although such a device has not been officially disclosed.

The similar Russian program was located in Crimea, Ukraine up until the fall of the Soviet Union, although an independent Ukraine carried on with it after to varying degrees. Now, Russia has taken the program as its own once again since annexing Crimea early last year.

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