The Russians Have Deployed Military Dolphins in the Black Sea

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Behold the majestic dolphin. Considered by empirical science to be the third most intelligent animal on Earth, after only humans and Sasquatch. Friend to sailors. Ancient symbol of help and guidance. Star of aquarium shows. The clowns of the sea:

And now, we find out, dolphins are now a weapon of war:

Source - The Russian military deployed highly trained 'spy dolphins' to secure its Black Sea naval HQ, satellites appear to have shown.

Images released by the US Naval Institute today show dolphin pens were moved to the gates of Sevastopol Harbour, Crimea in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine.

Dolphins are used by the Russian military for 'counter diver' operations.

The canny mammals trained at the Crimean State Oceanarium can reportedly fight off invading divers, carry bombs and even plant mines. 

Russia took control of the dolphin unit after annexing Crimea in 2014. Moscow claimed the mammals 'defected' to Russia.

I want to avoid putting too fine a point on this. We didn't need to know Putin is turning lovable aquatic mammals into underwater soldiers to know he's a bad actor. And we all tend or anthropomorphize animals enough as it is. So we can't get overly sentimental about these creatures when children are being bombed every day. Even when their intelligence and ability to be trained is being bastardized for evil purposes.

We can also be sure this has been going on in some form or another in most of the militaries around the world for years. Because that always seems to be what happens with practically anything that is good in this life. If movies have taught us anything, it's that there is nothing so wondrous and pure that someone isn't going to take it apart to see how they can weaponize it. As a matter of fact, this very premise was in a fairly forgettable movie I saw as a kid. George C. Scott (with co-star Paul Sorvino from Goodfellas) played a researcher who taught a dolphin how to talk:

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And it was only a matter of time before someone was strapping an undersea mine to one's head to turn it into a little murder torpedo and kill the President. Or something. 

Anyway, that's exactly what Putin's henchmen are doing in the Black Sea. Life is imitating art. One can only hope the West is coming up with its own program of training crack squadrons of dolphins to maybe talk these Crimean/Russian dolphins over to our side, and close the Cetacean Gap. If these creatures truly are as intelligent as we're told, they'd much rather be on our side than do the bidding of some evil Bond villain like him. 

P.S. War is terrible.