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Thank you. Oh, I'm on good.
Can I tell you something,
just, you know, in private, you
and me and the Internet,
it's kind of intimidating standing
up here with this full
hall and
I don't know, nobody ever mentioned it,
but it's actually a little bit scary.
It is.
But I guess it's my own fault,
cause last year I
spoke over and Holga about
Soviet encryption and World War Two
and I got a lot of very positive
feedback. And people were like
more historical topics, please.
So I guess the CCC thought
that would be a good idea and
promoted me to haul to
to speak about.
To speak about history once again,
unfortunately, we only have 30 minutes
tonight, so I would love to
go into much more detail about
technical stuff,
but I'd have to I
have to shorten it a little bit.
I'll try to talk about
my topic for 20 minutes.
So we have ten minutes for
Q&A afterwards.
And if that's not enough, we can go
somewhere and have a talk.
So now let's see if
this. Yes, it works.
What I would like to
talk about, first
of all, I would like
to introduce to
you a kind
of living drone used
extensively in World War One and World
War Two.
Pigeons, as you can see,
used as messengers and also as spies
to take aerial photographs of enemy
territory.
Secondly, I'd like to very
quickly elaborate
on animals use
to deliver and drop bombs
on enemy enemies
in World War Two, such as bats,
cats and dogs, and finally
go into the present situation
and talk about things
that are being worked on right now,
such as cyborg drones,
actually surgically altered animals
and ask a few questions about
what these animals might be doing.
A couple of words about pigeons,
so-called homing pigeons are
a variety of domestic pigeons
that are bred especially
to fly very fast over
very long distances.
And these pigeons, what they do,
basically, they fly home.
They have an innate homing ability.
They always fly back
to their home nests, also known as
their pigeon loft.
One more term, a
person who breeds and keeps these pigeons
is a pigeon fancier because
he fancies pigeons.
So pigeons
have been used as messengers since
ancient times.
Let's not go into that.
Let's go back one hundred
years to World War One, starting in
1914, where communication
was a bit different from today.
Radio communication and also wired
communication was still very crude and
unreliable.
Imagine you're going
into enemy territory with your troops,
you're going into battle, and you need
means of communication with your back
supply.
You'll have to actually carry big
rolls of wire and string wire
around to communicate.
And obviously that can be cut
once you get into a really tough
battle situation that's not going to
work.
But something that did work
was pigeons.
Pigeons were used by all countries
in World War One,
kept behind the front lines
in these mobile lofts
and then carried into battle.
In these kinds of wicker baskets
and what you did, once you're in
the trench, you need to get a message
to your back supply.
You take out the pigeon, you write a
little note, you attach it to the pigeon
and send it off.
And these pigeons were so reliable
that about 95 percent of all
messages got through.
And they were so important that
in 1914, the French army alone
kept 72 of these mobile
pigeon lofts behind the front.
The United States Army alone used
about 600 pigeons in France in 1917
and 18.
And even more so in
World War Two, the United Kingdom used
about two hundred fifty thousand pigeons.
And it was so important that
you had these kinds of posters don't
shoot the carrier pigeon because it would
be a broken link and vital
communications.
And the United Kingdom actually had fines
for killing, wounding or molesting homing
pigeons six months
in prison or one hundred pounds,
which was a lot of money back then.
Very quickly, one
pigeon which
was actually awarded the French
Quarter G&A after the war
was Cheramie, which is French for
a dear friend.
She was actually female, but
it was only discovered after she died
that she was had been female.
She delivered crucial messages despite
being shot by German troops.
She say she saved
two hundred American lives
of American troops trapped behind German
lines, surrounded by German troops
who could not communicate in any other
way, and who were
actually caught under a friendly fire
in October 1918.
So all they could do was
send a little message.
I don't know if you can read it.
We are along the road parallel
to seventy six point four.
Our artillery is dropping a barrage
directly on us.
For heaven's sake, stop it.
And they send off Cheramie
with this message.
Sharoni took one hour to
her home loft, delivered the message,
and the American troops could stop
shooting their own people behind
enemy lines and find a way to evacuate
them.
So as you can see, sometimes these
pigeons were shot down,
they were wounded and they were actually
captured as prisoners of war.
Here you have.
Captured German war pigeons
in a victory parade in New York City
in 1919.
When the Second World War came
around, pigeons were still used
for messaging, although communications
had improved, but
armies started thinking about other
ways of using animals in
their war effort, especially
in the United States after the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor in December
1941.
People began to think about how
can we retaliate?
How can we find a way to bomb
Japanese cities just like they
bombed Pearl Harbor?
We need to do something.
And a civilian who was actually
a dentist had a brilliant idea.
He proposed to the president, which was
obviously normal at that time,
that he had found a way to
firebomb Japanese cities.
And the answer is.
Bat bombs.
This was actually
researched not in that exact
way, but the United
States started a military project
thinking about ways to use bats.
The idea was find lots of bats,
put them into hibernation by cooling
them down, clip
a tiny little incendiary bomb
to their chest, release
them over Japanese cities.
They are going to wake up.
And then as bats do, they will
try to find a hiding place
and hopefully hide in the attics
of Japanese houses, which at that
time were mainly constructed of
wood and paper.
And this actually worked.
It worked really well because
one day on a military
base in New Mexico where this project was
being researched, a couple
of bats with live bombs
attached to themselves were
accidentally released
and they found a hiding
place under a fuel tank.
And the military base burned down
eventually, this project was,
although.
Successful, superseded by the atomic
bombs dropped on Japanese cities, as you
know, in 1945.
Another idea, which very
shortly I'd like to mention was
the Soviet Union training dogs
to carry bombs under
German tanks during World War
Two. They were trained
with food, put under tanks to
run there.
And eventually
they had these kinds of bomb strapped
to their bodies and they were supposed
to run under German tanks and explode.
This did not work well because in
actual battle situations, the dogs were
confused and scared of the noise
and the moving tanks.
Some of them ran back to their
trainers and their are timers went off
and they exploded.
Some of them attacked Soviet
tanks because they knew how
these tanks were supposed to smell,
because Soviet tanks ran on diesel,
German tanks ran on gasoline,
and they were used to diesel tanks.
So not very good.
Nonetheless, this project
was followed
until 1996 in Russia
for whatever reason.
One more idea during World War Two
was cats, if you can use
dogs, why not use cats?
And the single idea
behind this project was
cats don't like water, do they?
So how about we put a cat
with a bomb next to
me, just drop it in the ocean next to the
enemy's ships and the cat, because it
doesn't like water, is going to jump onto
the ship and then explode.
So what do you think?
Good idea.
No.
Those poor cats drowned
moving to the present.
Let's take a step to the present.
The thing about all these projects
in the past 100 years
is that for the longest time,
the use of animals
as these kinds of drones, delivering
messages, dropping bombs, starting
fires was always limited
to a creature's natural behavior.
And what you could train an animal to
do, you can.
In a very limited way, you can train
pigeons, you can train dogs,
cats, not so much,
but there was also there
was always this limitation.
For example, these pigeons, they only fly
home. You cannot send them anywhere.
But as of 2014,
scientists are actually working on
finding a way to remedy
that, working on these
kinds of insects
you see here, attaching
tiny electrodes to the insects
from a very early moment in their
lives and are
monitoring the electrical signals
these insects use during
flight.
And the idea behind that is that
eventually scientists are hoping to
reverse engineer this and.
Use these same electrical
signals to steer
these insects in a certain direction
so they could be used, for example,
as researchers
say, for search and rescue
missions.
Yes, sure.
Search and rescue thing
is the questions that all
these projects involving
animals pose.
If you want to use insects
for search and rescue missions, what else
can you use them for, what other
animals can use in the same way?
There are, of course, ethical questions
of animal protection.
Who's responsible, who's morally
responsible for surgically
altering these animals and
using them possibly
for malevolent purposes.
And the situation as of now
is that already seven
years ago, Charles Higgins of the
University of Arizona, who works with
insects, predicted
that around 20, 17
to 20 to hybrid computers
using on the one hand,
computers, on the other hand, live tissue
would actually be operational.
And we're talking obviously
about.
For example, a computerized
hand, but also
about these kinds of insects
and other animals being
controlled
beyond their own means,
somebody yesterday somebody
sent me a very interesting
link, a video about
a guy who turned his dead cat
into a helicopter.
It's hilarious, but
I can't show it because of time
reasons, because we only have five
minutes. I'm almost done.
I'll include the link with the slides.
I'll upload it.
So this guy had his dead
cat stuffed and prepared and
turned it into a helicopter.
It flies.
And this video
poses the question, what is the
difference between shoes made of cow
and helicopters made of cats?
Many of us eat animals.
And so where's the
limit? Where's the
where's the difference between eating
cows and using insects,
dogs, pigeons, bats
for other purposes,
military purposes.
For example,
as of 2014,
the CIA, they just tweeted
a couple of days ago that they are pigeon
missions are still classified.
Why what are they doing
still with these pigeons?
The question is, who is working on what
right now?
In an interview about drones last
year in 2013, Noam Chomsky
asked the question, if you look
at the public reports, you can imagine
what the secret reports are.
So the question is, all
these things that can be researched
that I could present here,
how much of what is really being
researched is that?
Thank you very much.
We have a few minutes for Q&A, if you
have any questions, please do line up at
the hall microphones.
We have six of them on the ground level.
Are there any questions from the
Internet? No.
Any questions from the audience?
No, go on, guys,
no, no questions,
but
OK, we do have a question at microphone
three.
Yes, hello.
Well, I
was thinking, what does the, uh,
Geneva Convention say about the use
of animals and war?
Or is it saying something about it?
Question is, what does the Geneva
Convention say about this?
I have to say, I have no idea
or is there any of
wall rules that but I've
not come across anything,
does anybody is anybody
here into an expert
on these kinds of
are there any laws on using
animals in these
the United States,
the United States that never signed the
Geneva Convention?
They say they are following
that anyway.
Yeah, that's another that's another
thing I
have to say.
I have I've I've come across
these questions.
What are well.
What are the moral implications
of doing this to these animals,
who is responsible?
I have not come across anything in
writing that would
actually regulate
this kind of thing.
You were saying something.
In addition to the Geneva Conventions,
wildlife in war zones,
so that they should be included in the
protection. OK.
Yes, the gentleman just
said there is a draft
to the Geneva Convention about the
protection of wildlife in war situations,
but it's not in
the officially signed version
as of yet.
Thank you.
Another question from microphone number
five, please.
Yeah, you mentioned pigeons
that were used in World War One.
And then there's the Olympic discipline,
pigeon shooting.
Is there any relationship between this?
So does this Olympic
discipline or this kind of sports.
Yeah. Was invented in World War
One because the enemies had to
shut the pigeons.
They shoot pigeons?
Yeah, I think so.
When when they were used as spies, they
should shoot them.
So is this where the sports
discipline comes from?
I'm shocked.
They shoot pigeons
in the Olympics.
I mean, really live pigeons.
Know it's forbidden
to shoot live pigeons for sports, but
they use solid pigeons.
So they shoot something in the air and
it's called pigeons.
I thought these were clay pigeons.
Yeah, it is. But is the.
Oh, OK.
So so to be clear, they're
not shooting live pigeons in the
Olympics.
Thank you. Oh, God, that's good.
I think clay pigeon
shooting is actually older than
World War One,
but I would have to
look it up.
Clay pigeons.
Yeah, no, I mean, sure.
In World War One, you shot
down your enemies pigeons
whenever you saw them because everybody
was using them. So
the troops knew that the enemy was
probably using pigeons.
So if they saw pigeons rising
up from the enemy's trenches, they try
to shoot him.
They also sometimes had falcons
to hunt these pigeons and bring
them down.
OK, we have another clay pigeon at six.
Please shoot
him.
How much of this cyborg moth
work is being done in the public domain?
And how much of this neural
interface work can be used to assist
those with, say, neurodegenerative
diseases?
Well, that's that's actually the point
behind all this
part of it. It's
this is research
that is publicly done.
I believe it's the University
of North Carolina.
It's working on it as well as
the University of Arizona.
Professor Charles Higgins
is doing this research.
And, of course, it's
one part is, as it
is said, to to use these insects
in search and rescue missions where
humans cannot go in to gather information
about catastrophes, earthquakes
and stuff like that.
But it's obviously
technically very similar to
the research being done to, for example,
help
disabled people to regain control
of their muscles.
It's a very similar process.
And working together in that
area is
microphone number two, please.
Yeah, I'm wondering about the detail if
homing pigeons, the
way I understood is that they always
return to their home, but now I so
that you can actually transport their
home somewhere else and then
they just accept this as you have
to train them.
Well, these are special pigeons.
They are bred.
They have certain genetic material.
And you can you can train them to get
used to these mobile lofts,
but you can only move these for a couple
of times. So you can use
one of these pigeons for a couple of
weeks at the front.
And then you have to they get confused
after a couple.
If you move the loft around three
or four times,
they get confused about that.
So you can use one of those pigeons
for a couple of weeks and then you have
to retire them.
We have a question from the Internet.
Well, I think you actually have
two questions.
First one is, how long would it take to
train or retrain a pigeon
into a live drone?
And the second question is, is the time
of life drones over,
considering that the drones are advancing
very fast?
First of all, training these pigeons
starts about at
the age of four weeks
when they are four weeks old, they are
taken away from their nests and they are
trained to accept a
new loft, which takes about another
four weeks.
So when they're eight weeks old, they
are fully trained.
And you can in these war situations,
you can take them to the front and use
them for another couple of weeks.
That's why you need so many of these.
You had two hundred fifty thousand in
World War Two because they
had to be trained for a couple of weeks
and after a couple of weeks, they were
obsolete.
The second part is the age,
the era of live drones over.
I'd say
yes and no.
The era of these pigeons
or bats is obviously
over.
I mean, the United Kingdom stopped
its pigeon army
in fifty seven.
The Swiss army kept it till nineteen
ninety six.
But as of today, and
nobody uses these pigeons anymore for
armies.
But if
we look at what's being done right
now in 2014, working with these insects,
it's obviously a different kind of
live drone that's being developed.
And I think that's that's going on really
strongly. And the question
is, is this all what's
being done, these insects
for search and rescue missions?
I mean, if the CIA says it's pigeon
missions are still classified, you have
to ask yourself what might they be
working on?
And I'm very skeptical.
I think there might be a lot going on
that's not in the public domain.
Microphone number four, please.
I don't know if it was already answered
correctly. I just wanted a clarification.
For how long do you have to.
Well, have a pigeon
at a loft so it accepts that
it's its home
about four weeks.
No, I mean, when we like
when a company moves somewhere
and do you have to stay
there for some some time so that
the pigeons.
Well, so this is where I live
now. Yeah.
If that's the for which
I think is
as far as I understand,
science does not
still not fully know how these
pigeons find home.
It is considered to be a mixture
of possibly
using the electromagnetic
field of the earth,
also using smell and using
some sort of map visual keys.
But as far as I understand, it takes
about four weeks to get a pigeon used to
its new home so that it will
go back there and not to where it was
born.
OK, thanks. Microphone number three,
please.
Again, a question on pigeons
and how could you distinguish between
a friendly and
animate the pigeons of
the enemy that just because of the
direction where they fly from?
Yeah, I mean, they look like pigeons.
Now, in your in your presentation,
you told it was forbidden to shoot and
pigeons. So how well the people
know it. Yes.
Our parents already knew that that
fine for shooting pigeons
that applied to
the United Kingdom.
So inside of England, people
were fined if they killed
or molested homing pigeons because these
were needed for the war effort,
obviously at the front.
Well, it might have
happened that friendly fire or caught
some pigeons, I
guess.
Microphone number six, please.
I was wondering if you have found out
anything about dolphins.
Yes, I read something about dolphins
and bombs,
dolphins being trained to to find.
So I understand.
I don't know if that's what you mean.
It was just too much material.
There's there's a lot going on.
There's obviously a lot of animals
being used that were used.
I don't know if you could
say something about that or.
No, no.
I've just heard it from
oh, I read it somewhere.
And so I thought, yeah,
I came across it, but I chose
to focus on on birds and just
do the little excursion on dogs
and those cats.
OK, but yes, dolphins
also dolphins are considered very
intelligent animals and can also
be trained to do certain tasks.
They were running out of time, one last
quick question here from microphone to
please.
Thank you. Did you find any evidence
of actual use, abuse
of animals as biological
warfare carriers or something like that?
Um, biological
warfare carriers, yes.
Like the traditional disease that
catapults if it was it was
after World War Two, the British
actually did research
in that area to use pigeons to drop,
um, bacteria
or what have you.
But since
other technical means
were being developed
at that time, we're talking about the
1950s where
technical developments
were becoming better and better.
And these pigeon programs were eventually
stopped in the 1950s.
But, yes, people thought about
using pigeons also to to spread
whatever diseases,
biological warfare.
Thank you for your time.
Can you please give
a warm round of applause?