Acoustic Kitty

in #strange • 9 years ago (edited)

We should have a 'strange facts' or 'believe it or not' category! This strange fact seems to be pretty well known and documented online, but I came across it for the first time in my search for a Steemit username.

The CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology tried to use cats to spy on the Russians in the 1960s. In the secret project, literally called Acoustic Kitty, operatives planned to have a microphone implanted in a trained cat's ear canal and a radio transmitter and wires placed underneath its skin, and then send it over to a Soviet embassy to act as a spy in plain sight. At first the cats were too easily distracted by hunger, so another operation was performed to mess with their sensation of hunger. (I have absolutely no idea how this part worked.)

The project was started in 1961 and scrapped in 1967. Depending on which source you believe, this is either because a cat was hit by a taxi at the very beginning of its mission, or because those involved decided that training the cats just wasn't feasible.

Oh, and the total cost was was around $20M, back then.

Sources: The Telegraph, Wiki page, a Memory Palace episode, etc.

And check out this guy's band.

#TIL

#til #strange-facts #TIL
9 years ago in #strange by
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     9 years ago 

    Cats can't be trusted they probably turned double agents lol

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     9 years ago 

    I have a theory that I've yet to disprove outside of mainstream understanding of animals and physics....

    Cats are secretly aliens who rule the world.

    I mean... the Egyptians loved cats.. .and they built the pyramids for some unknown reason. Why not because of cats?

    Then consider the mind controlling parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Seems like a convenient mechanism cats thought up before coming here to blame their poop instead of themselves.

    Then consider this fucked up alien walk cats do that always freaks me out.

    Cats are strange man. Mine never ceases to amaze me... clearly because she controls my mind with her poop.

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     9 years ago 

    I didn't know they did that walk! :o Toxoplasma gondii is super creepy.

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       9 years ago 

      That's crazy! Cats never do what you want them to.

      #TIL would probably work.

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       9 years ago 

      BF Skinner trained pigeons to guide a glider to act as a guided missile, during WW II. Three pigeons in a nosecone pecked at a controller and a kind of voting steered the vehicle. They performed with gunshots going off around their heads, and were still accurate and able after 7 years without performing the task. Operant Conditioning can do amazing things. Its interesting that we accept some animal jobs, such as seeing eye dogs, but new uses for animals seem strange. Recently a european firm trained a falcon to take down drones.