Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Dolphin Detectors

Episode Date: December 5, 2018

They don’t actually disarm mines, but navies around the world use dolphins to find and tag sea mines so humans can disarm the mines themselves. But even if it’s safe, is it ethical? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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There's Chuck, there's Josh, that's me, and there's Jerry over there. No time to talk any further. Let's get started. We're talking about dolphins. Sorry, why? Are you going to do that every time? As long as I get a laugh out of you, yeah. Yeah, I will laugh every time.

Well then, every time it is. I'm laughing because then we do this and it takes more time than it really does. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah. Maybe I will stop doing that because I really do feel like pressed for time. Like you can see I'm perspiring across the top of my lip. Hey, let me try a Josh Clark intro. Okay.

Hey, Josh, you ever seen a dolphin? Yes, I have, Chuck, as a matter of fact. It does, it's kind of exhilarating. Yeah, especially when you know. That the other person has seen or done or heard of. Whatever. Yeah, you're in the club. So we've both seen dolphins.

We have. And I knew about this. What we're talking about here is the fact that the US Navy uses dolphins to find unexploded underwater ocean mines. Right. And I knew about this, but it was kind of cool just to see how exactly this works. Well, also to think a lot of people have the impression that the dolphins are there. They're sweating themselves.

They're wiping sweat from their brows. They're disarming these mines, right? Yeah. My flipper can't even hold these pliers. Right. Or was it the green wire or the red wire I'm supposed to clip? But I'm colorblind. Right.

That's not the case at all. They don't actually disarm the mines. They don't even really get that close to it. What they do is they go find mines for like the US Navy, it's not just the US Navy that does this. Actually, Russia captured Ukraine's dolphin patrol in Crimea in the Crimean war recently. They use Dolph Lundgren. Right.

He can't swim. Terrible joke. He sinks like a stone. He does. He doesn't look like he would be a swimmer, does he? No, he's too. He's got too much like muscle, you know, which I mean sounds counterintuitive, but yeah, he does look like he would sink for sure.

Yeah, so what do you say Russians use them? I'm sure other people do too, right? A lot of people do. And again, it's they're not using them to disarm the mines, they're using them to find mines. And the reason they use dolphins to find mines is because there are, there's no technology that we have that comes even close to rivaling a dolphin's ability to find something in very murky water with a lot of loud acoustic noise and that may be disguised to look like something

else and mines fall under all three of those categories. Yeah, so what a dolphin does and we'll get to how they do it, but they are trained to do this specifically with just like they would be at Stinky Old Sea World with like, you know, fish as their reward to do their little tricks, but they, they learn to search for these mines, find one, and like you said, they could be like 50 feet away. It's not like they have to go knock on it or anything like that. Right. They wouldn't explode anyway.

So they go find one, they swim back to the boat and ring a bell or, you know, some sort of signifier that they've worked out. They set off a firework. They shoot a flare at the captain. And then the human says, all right, good job. Your work is not quite done though, because all you're doing is saying there's something down there. And now here is a, an acoustic transponder and you go take this, he puts it in his little

fist and then the dolphin swims back to the mine and now they have, you know, it's like, it's a transponder. So they actually know where it is now. Right. And then they come back and they get the fish, which is really what they're, they're kind of after. If you remember our SAR dogs episode, it's, it's kind of the thing. Like they're after a fish, they know if they go do this, they'll get a fish.

And people think dolphins are smart. They're dumb because they don't realize there's fish everywhere in that ocean. So Chuck, how, how would a dolphin do this kind of thing? Why is a dolphin so much, so, so vastly superior to anything that humans can come up with technology wise? Well, humans are pretty good at coming up with technology, frankly. That is correct. But we use sonar and they use sonar, but they've been using sonar a lot longer than we've

been using sonar. That's the point of this article. It really is sort of it. Like they, I mean, dolphins have been around way longer than we've been using sonar. And that's their, their chief, I mean, I guess it's sort of a communication device. Oh yeah, definitely is they communicate, but it's also the way that they see, I guess, is the best way you could put it. They see with their, their, well, they don't have ears.

They see with what we normally might think of as things that we might hear. Yeah, and that's why it's so tough to kind of wrap your head around what they're doing. But if you think about it, if, if our vision is nothing but a bunch of electrical impulses stimulated by light that forms like a mental conception of an object in our brain, that's exactly what dolphins are doing, but they're doing it with sound. They're shooting out like a kind of thing. And when it comes back, it tells them about that object and it forms an impression in their brain, just like we do visually, they do orally, but not through the mouth.

I mean, orally AU, orally, well put, yeah, and supposedly they are so good at this kind of echo location that they can tell the difference from 50 feet away between a BB gun pellet being dropped in the water and a kernel of corn being dropped in the water. Yeah. Which is again, now we're starting to reach the point where it's like, okay, now I see why they're so much better than, than our technology, like, yeah, I can see that I could, if you put a BB in a corner, a kernel of corn next to each other 50 feet away, I can do that.

I can see that. But if the visibility underwater, sure, if the visibility underwater is like two feet in front of your face, you couldn't do that a dolphin could, which is why they come in handy. Right. And so we talked about echo location with bats before, and I feel like with something else, but definitely with bats, that was one of our great long form episodes. Probably whales, whales episode.

Yeah, probably so. But dolphins use the same process. They use their nasal passages and they make that little clicking sound that you did so well. Thank you. They send it to the forehead and that focuses the sound into like a beam that shoots out into the water. Right.

That's step one. Yeah. And then what happens after that? Well, after that, because it's echo location, it works just like with the bats, things bounce off and come back to them. In the case of bats, it's mosquitoes and things like that, or stupid humans with tennis rackets. It bounces back to the dolphin as that echo, and then they absorb that into their jaw.

Like a tennis racket. Like a tennis racket. Oh, no. Poor dolphin. Poor dolphin. And this part is kind of gross sounding, but there is what Jane McGrath referred to as a passage of fat in the jaw, and that's just really just a conductor that conducts the sound to the inner ear of the dolphin, which and then all the nerve impulses get going

and then the brain starts firing. And like you said, just like we see something, they can say, wow, that thing is a round like a BB or it's shaped, a kernel shaped like a corn kernel. Or where they go. Say it's a sea mine, that thing's going to blow, I better go tell the Navy. Or that's a fish. I don't even need to go back to the boat. Right.

I can eat. So Chuck, let's take an ad break and then we will come back and we will talk about how not everybody is super hip with the idea of using dolphins in war. Okay, see what you're doing, do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God, seriously, I swear, and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there

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Songs that even have some really special guests on to share their craziness and what they have too much to say about. So you guys can listen to new episodes of too much to say every Wednesday on the Nashville podcast network available on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcast. Okay, we're back. And like I said, not everybody's really happy that the US Navy is using dolphins. And actually, I should say real quick, Chuck, I want to fit this in.

Oh, I shouldn't have even said I wanted to fit it in. That's using a valuable time. So the Navy started using dolphins quite by accident. I guess in 1960, there was a study where they started paying attention to dolphins. They started to study them, like I just said, and they were trying to figure out if they could learn anything from dolphins to make torpedoes more, I guess, aqua dynamic so that they could move through the water more. Sure.

So you look to a dolphin. Right. And they didn't learn anything for torpedoes, but they were like, wait, these things are super smart and they have amazing echolocation. Maybe we should figure out something else for them and they put them into use pretty shortly after that they started training them. They said they're pretty smart, but here's the hitch. They don't realize they're surrounded by fish in the ocean.

They think they can only get them from this stupid bucket on the boat. It's also possible it's just really lazy. Oh, maybe. Maybe. Like if I had, like I can go to a grocery store, but if I had, if I was laying on the couch and someone dropped by and dropped food in my mouth. Right, exactly. All over it.

Yeah. That's a really good analogy. I get it now. So, all right, first of all, we already said that they don't disarm them and they don't even get that close. So you might think that even animal rights activists would be like, hey, this is fine. They're not getting close. Even if they did, like I said before, they're not going to explode because they're meant

to explode when a ship hits it, not any octopus kind of floating by because that would defeat the purpose of putting a mine in the ocean. Right. So you would think like, all right, what's the harm then? But it turns out there actually is quite a bit of harm that could come about. Yeah, because if you have a trained team of dolphins that you're using in one place, say the Atlantic, and you suddenly need them over in the Pacific, you got to get them from point A to point B and those dolphins may not be acclimated to the Pacific, especially

if it's like the Northern Pacific and it's super cold and they're used to the Middle Atlantic where it's relatively warm, right? That's one thing. Another thing is transporting them there alone is an ordeal for the dolphins. Yeah. I mean, anyone who's ever seen a whale or a dolphin or a big shark like wrapped up in that sling, being like lifted out of the ocean into a plane or something into a tank, it's just like, it looks awful.

Nothing about that makes it look like that any of those animals are psyched that that's happening. So this travel is designed for humans and it's a nightmare for humans, right? Imagine what it's like for a dolphin. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good point. It's a lot of stress on their body and they're, you know, it might sound hippie-dippy, but on their emotional well-being, you know?

On their Earth spirit. Well, we've talked about Zucosis. It's a real thing. Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. And I would imagine that if you want to drive a dolphin insane, there are worse ways to do that than putting it on an airplane. Taking it for a ride.

Absolutely. And there were, there was actually a, they were going to use some dolphins as part of a dolphin sea lion team, sea lion or seal, one of the two. I think, well, sea lions do this as well, for sure. Then it was a dolphin sea lion team. They actually have, there are naval teams made up of sea lions and dolphins that work together that not only discover mines, they're also trained to discover like underwater saboteurs, divers, swimmers who aren't supposed to be there that want to like blow up a military

station and the dolphin will go find the guy, go tell the sea lion. The sea lion goes and puts an ankle cuff on the swimmer. Shut up. I'm not kidding. Oh man. And they're tethered to a boat now. Like, so the sea lion goes and arrests the guy and then they, they both go tell the, the navy that you got, you got someone on the line.

So the dolphin's doing like some trick in front of the guy and he's like, wow. I mean, I know I'm supposed to plant this bomb, but that's pretty neat looking. And then he looks down and he's like, ah, again, dolphins. And then the sea lion and the dolphin high five. Yeah. But then so they were going to set up a patrol in the, in Puget Sound in Washington state. There's an army port there and they were going to have set up patrols and the, I think some animal rights groups said, nope, not on our watch.

And to raise public awareness, they started knitting sweaters for the dolphins who are going to be transported to the, to the cold water and it worked for a little while. I think that, that they have those things now. Yeah. I'm sure there's a work around. So that's, that is dolphins disarming mines, which they don't actually do. Correct. The dolphins find the mines and, and many, many people are still not too supportive of

that. Right. Yeah. They have no idea what the wars, what's going on with the war, you know, they don't know what they're being used for. It's just, it's a moral quandary for sure. Yeah. The one thing I couldn't find, uh, really quick before we go is what mines are disguised

as one thing I saw, the only thing I saw was that they can be disguised to appear like ripples in the water and I'm like, how would you do that? And then I realized, oh, on sonar, it would look like a ripple in the water. So I think they were talking about disguising them. I'm sure they do visually as well, but I think mostly on sonar is how they try to disguise them. Interesting. Yeah.

I would love to meet the person who's like, I know how to disguise a mine as a ripple in water. Right. I thought, yeah, that makes more sense. I was thinking like they would make it look like a big floating kelp mass. Yeah. So was I at first and they might, but I couldn't find anything like that. I was the only thing I found.

Very nice. Uh, well, if you want to know more about dolphins disarming sea mines, hang around in the sea. See what happens. And in the meantime, get in touch with us. You can send us an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works.com.