The Russians Probably Used This Beluga Whale As A Spy

Norwegian fishermen met a Russian spy at the end of last week, but the intruder did not reveal his mission, and rightly so: he could not, because it was a beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas).

However, the beluga whale costume gave it away. The amazing domesticated whale wore a harness that read "Team St. Petersburg," indicating that the Russian navy had probably trained it for special operations, according to news sources.

But why would the Russian navy use a beluga whale for special operations, unlike a bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncates) or a California sea lion (Zalophus Californians), as does the United States Navy? Here's a look at why these marine mammals are recruited into service by some countries. [Beasts in battle: 15 incredible recruits of animals in the war]

The short answer is that Beluga whales are extremely intelligent, calm in difficult situations and easy to train, said Pierre Beland, marine biology research scientist at the National Ecotoxicology Institute of San Lorenzo in Montreal, Canada. Beland has been studying belugas since 1982 but was not involved in the case of this whale.

On April 26, a Norwegian fisherman spotted the beluga near the fishing village of Inga, along the northern coast of Norway. Later, Norwegian scientists tracked the whale and removed their very tight harness, according to the Norwegian news outlet. The harness had an accessory for a GoPro camera, but there was no longer a camera there, said VG Auden Rikardsen, a professor at the Norwegian Arctic University in Tromsø (UiT).

Rikardsen added that, as far as he knows, neither Norwegian nor Russian researchers put the harnesses on belugas, suggesting that this was probably the work of the Russian navy in Murmansk, a city in northwest Russia, he said. The animal probably approached the fishermen's boat because the animal was used to people who fed it to fish, Rikardsen observed. He said he hoped the whale could hunt by itself, but it's still not clear, Rikardsen said.

"It turned out that [the beluga] came from a naval installation on the Russian side in the Crimea," Béland said. "We assumed they had filed their teeth so he could carry a large object in his mouth, like a magnetic mine that could stick in the hull of a foreign ship for military purposes."

Later, Béland learned that a storm had broken a network in this naval installation, allowing the beluga whale to escape. But the Russians found out; They parked their boat in international waters and someone, presumably the whale trainer, was able to return the call to the whale. A year later, the whale escaped back to Turkish waters. By this time, the whale had quite a fan base in Turkey. But, once again, the Russians came back and collected the mammal, "and I never saw it again," Béland said.

By: Preeti Narula

Content: https://www.livescience.com/65359-beluga-whale-russian-spy.html