animals used in war today
From the 7th century A.D., Arab, Berber and Moorish camel troops were an important part of the Muslim armies that conquered the Middle East, North Africa, and southern Spain. Please deactivate your ad blocker in order to see our subscription offer, (Image credit: Erica Guilane-Nachez/Adobe), (Image credit: U.S. Library of Congress. During the two World Wars, Lack of horses and other beasts of burden sometimes led to the ingenious use of circus or zoo animals, such as Lizzie the elephant, who did war service for the factories of Sheffield. Many animals died during the crossing. They were also employed for sentry duty, and to spot snipers or hidden enemy forces. Pigeons have been used to carry messages since at least the 6th century B.C., when the Persian king Cyrus is said to have used pigeons to communicate with the distant parts of his empire. Since then, large dog breeds have served on battlefields, as scouts and as defensive sentries for everyone from the ancient Egyptians to Native American peoples. ), the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca led war elephants over the Alps to attack Italy from the north. In 1993 NARA opened "Buddies: Soldiers and Animals in World War II," a display of thirty-six of those images. © IWM Q 55233. • The horse was the most widely used animal throughout the recorded history of warfare. Some specially bred homing pigeons have found their way home from more than 1,800 miles (2,900 km) away. In later centuries, the Parthian and Sassanid Persians sometimes armored their camels entirely, like cataphract heavy horse cavalry. The Romans seem to have an especially bad history with bees. And in the centuries that followed, chariots were in use from ancient Egypt to ancient China. British propaganda from the time portrayed the bee attack as a fiendish German plot that used trip wires to aggravate the hives of the insects. In 2012, PETA, along with current and former military doctors, published a study in the journal Military Medicine—the official journal of U.S. military surgeons—showing that nearly 80 percent of our NATO allies do not use any animals for military medical training. The Panamanians had only 1,200 troops to defend the city, but they also deployed a herd of 2,400 wild cattle, which they planned to stampede into the pirate army. Elephants were first used in war in India around the 4th century B.C., many centuries after wild Asian elephants first began to be tamed there around 4500 B.C. Yes, "killer" dolphins -- we're not talking about using dolphins to find underwater … © Ultimately, elephants proved unsuited to war — they were too vulnerable to massed weapons, and too likely to panic: the terrified giant beasts often caused as much damage to their own forces as they did to the enemy. One of the earliest accounts of dogs fighting in battle comes from the early kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor around 600 B.C., where a pack of Lydian war dogs routed and killed a number of invaders. Nocella, Anthony J. II, ed. Sometimes they have jobs to do: the horses, camels, mules, and donkeys used to transport soldiers and equipment, as well as … For the memorial in Canada, see, It was necessary to have fifteen (15) mules attached to the (Tank) battalion for the purpose of transporting ammunition and gasoline to tanks which were impossible to service with any type of vehicle this battalion possesses. Dogs may be man's best friends, but they can also be fearsome opponents. Dogs have long been employed in a wide variety of military purposes, more recently focusing on guarding and bomb detection, and along with dolphins and sea lions are in active use today. Shi Bo, in "Trente-six Stratagèmes Chinois" (in French. The creatures stampeded back into the Songhai army, who lost the battle and eventually lost control of their empire as a result. Horses, elephants, camels, and other animals have been used for both transportation and mounted attack.