Navy dolphins discover rare 19th-century Howell torpedo off San Diego coast

Two bottlenose dolphins trained by the U.S. Navy’s marine mammal program have discovered a rare 19th-century Howell torpedo off the coast of San Diego.

In all, 50 Howell torpedoes were made between 1870 and 1889, and the only other known example is on display at the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Wash., the Los Angeles Times reported.

Made of brass, the 11-foot-long elegant torpedo was the first such device to be able to follow a track and not leave a wake in the water.

www.nydailynews.com...

The dolphins were trained to search for a variety of shapes on the ocean floor. Upon surfacing not far from San Diego’s Del Coronado Hotel, one dolphin signaled by touching its nose to the bow of a boat that it had spotted something. A week later, a second dolphin confirmed a target in the same location and was given a marker to place next to it.
Navy divers and explosive-ordnance technicians then went down and examined the object, which was later identified as the Howell torpedo.

Considering the torpedo was made before electricity was provided to U.S. households, it was a great find to say the least.

It is very interesting how the Navy has been able to train the mammals, 80 dolphins and 40 sea lions, to go on missions such as mine recovery.


This is a picture of the only other torpedo found and it's on display at Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Wash.



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ETA: I did run a search and came up empty. But here lately I don't have good results with the search function.
So if already posted, just remove.....

snarky

Neat find! Never doubt the ingenuity of dolphins. I'm stunned that they were able to train them for such complex tasks though. Guess its turning out better than the monkey army Bush cooked up a while back...

wow thats cool I love how we can train animals to do stuff for us..

I saw a story earlier where they trained honey bees to sniff out land mines ..

here it is
www.extremetech.com...

Originally posted by goou111
wow thats cool I love how we can train animals to do stuff for us..

I saw a story earlier where they trained honey bees to sniff out land mines ..

here it is
www.extremetech.com...

Yeah, I had just read about that, over in Croatia they put a little TNT in their food to smell out land mines.
Un-BEE-lievable


Very cool stuff indeed....
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ETA:
Honeybees trained in Croatia to find land mines