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Don’t mess with Flipper

Mar. 15, 2000

When you were up nights fretting about leftovers from the Soviet arsenal, we bet you thinking about nuclear missles and perhaps a MiG or two falling into the hands of rogue states. You probably weren’t losing sleep over, say, killer communist dolphins.

During the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet Union trained marine mammals to detect mines and submarines, to carry explosives, and even to harpoon enemy divers. But times have changed, and Crimean authorities couldn’t afford to keep the mammals in fish, food supplements, and medicine. A squad including trained dolphins, Beluga whales, walruses, and sea lions from the Black Sea was recently sold to the Iran, where they’ll take up duties in the Persian Gulf.

Read the SUNDAY TIMES (UK) story here.

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Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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