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Navy May Use Mine-Detecting Dolphins In the Straight of Hormuz
New submitter cervesaebraciator writes "The Atlantic Wire reports that the Navy has a tested solution to the possible mining of the Strait of Hormuz. The Navy has 80 dolphins in San Diego Bay trained to use their own sonar to detect mines. When they find the mines, the dolphins drop an acoustic transponder nearby, so that human divers might return to defuse it. Retired Adm. Tim Keating cannot say, however, whether the dolphins will be used in the Straight."
The Obama administration has reportedly warned Iran that closing the Strait would provoke an American response.
With lasers of course...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081210140645AADMNkG
Whats the difference between Straight and Strait?
Straight, as in a line without a waver or curve.
Strait: "A strait is a narrow, navigable channel of water that connects two larger navigable bodies of water. "
And for the love of foreigners, if you guys do something about your spelling issues, please remove unsounded letters (like the "gh" in straight"), don't add any more of them. That's just cheating at scrabble!
Given how intelligent dolphins are, and how much technology and money it would take to replicate the functions and capabilities of a living creature, I don't think your view plays out. You talk about how expensive it would be to train dolphins, but it would be many more times expensive to use hardware instead.
... and thanks for all the oil !
Except in this case the personnel are dolphins.
Should be simple enough to rig one in ten of your mines with an acoustic package that responds to the presence of a Dolphin sonar frequency fingerprint by detonating. Need to be careful that it doesn't respond to a ship playing back Dolphin frequencies on its active sonar.
From what I understand about the sensitivity of marine mammals to extreme Sonar sound pressure - you wouldn't even need it to detonate - just let out a couple of sonic farts at 140db should deafen the Dolphins permanently. I'm sure the Navy has a nice retirement program for deaf Dolphins. Not like the US Navy could complain - no worse than they do during a typical navel exercise with the active sonar on their submarines and ships.
Always more marine mammals in the sea.
They have sex for fun
They also force their ladies to have sexy times through which is rape! The more you know! ===*
second most intelligent creatures on the planet.
“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Given how intelligent dolphins are, and how much technology and money it would take to replicate the functions and capabilities of a living creature, I don't think your view plays out. You talk about how expensive it would be to train dolphins, but it would be many more times expensive to use hardware instead.
I work at a university, and this is yet another case where the world should look to academia for the solution.
You need a cheap yet intelligent work force that's willing to work long hours and isn't overly picky about working conditions? That's easy - that's what grad students are for. They're easily replaceable too!
#DeleteChrome
I can't say that I oppose all USA military operations: I actually think that what they did (and led other nations to do) in Libya was pretty great. I bet we're going to see a lot more problems in that area (Be it terrorism, hanging on the edge of another civil war or just another dictator grabbing the power after a while) but it was still a joint operation by the international community, intended to help people who wanted to overthrow a dictator.
That said... It's hard to deny that a lot of the problems in the area are also more or less directly caused by the USA. It's a very militaristic nation, with a very large and loud minority(?) of islamophobes and every few years it demonstrates that it still reserves itself the right to attack any nation there for whatever reason it wants to, whether or not they have the support of the international community and whether or not those reasons even make sense.
Whenever any dictator faces an uprising or any terrorist organization faces opposition from the locals, the first thing they say "Those are just agents of USA messing around" and the problem is... that doesn't sound as far-fetched as it should. USA foreign policy has been very effective in painting the nation as an evil empire against which the Arabs should unite. I'm not saying that there wouldn't be terrorist nutjobs if not for USA but I am saying that they have more support and credibility due to actions by USA. As far as I'm aware, the main platform of Ahmadinejad is rallying against USA: He gains support during conflicts like these and loses it when people direct their attention to internal affairs.
[...] during a typical navel exercise [...]
you made my day here