Canines aren't the only animals who can land jobs in the military.
The US has trained bottlenose dolphins to carry out a range of military tasks, from locating underwater mines to flagging the presence of enemy swimmers for harbor defense.
The Navy Marine Mammal Program at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (or SPAWAR) in San Diego, California trains 85 dolphins and 50 sea lions, according to SPAWAR spokesman Jim Fallin.
NBC
reported in 2002 that the program got $14 million in funding a year, and that it has the Pentagon's financial backing through the year 2020.
The program first started in 1960 when the Navy studied Notty, a female Pacific white-sided dolphin. The Navy hoped to study the dolphin's biomechanics and then use its findings for developing faster torpedoes. "But quickly the focus changed to covert training," according to NBC.
Military researchers soon realized that the dolphins themselves could become a battlefield asset. "It was soon after discovered that they had excellent biological sonar, so they definitely did a lot of research on that as well," Ed Budzyna, a spokesman for SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific, told Business Insider.
