In future wars, small animals can also play a big role

Humans are the only intelligent creatures on Earth. However, the theory of evolution tells us that we are not the end of evolution. As long as conditions permit, new intelligent creatures will emerge and become competitors or even "gravediggers" of humans. This seemingly unfounded idea has inspired novelists. The long science fiction novel "The Newt Rebellion" published by Czech writer Karel Capek in 1936 shows a battle for survival between humans and "fish".

The "intelligent newt" that is hostile to humans is of course just the imagination of the novelist, but humans have a long history of taming animals as their "comrades-in-arms". Among them, the most familiar ones are war horses, military dogs, homing pigeons, dolphins, etc.

Dolphins are known as the "smartest animals in the ocean." Dolphins have excellent sonar systems that can detect objects a few centimeters wide from 100 meters away, which is like finding a walnut kernel on a football field. In addition, they can dive hundreds of meters below the surface without suffering from decompression sickness like human divers.

Therefore, in order to retrieve equipment lost at sea, identify intruders who swim into restricted areas, and detect mines buried on the seabed or floating in the water and tied to anchors. In the 1970s, the US Navy began training dolphins to detect and guide bomb disposal teams to remove mines. Now, this training has expanded into a large-scale program of the "Marine Mammal Project". They train dolphins in the same way as police dogs and hounds, and give them rewards, such as fish, when they complete their tasks correctly. Practical applications have shown that trained dolphins can detect underwater mines and enemy swimmers, and then report to their handlers. In addition to dolphins, the training targets also include sea lions that are trained to swim into closed areas and point out enemy frogmen. The advantage of sea lions is their impeccable underwater vision, which can help detect enemy diving intruders.

Soldiers are training dolphins. Source: Xinhua News Agency

With the widespread use of high-tech means, animal soldiers will be indispensable on future battlefields. According to the British "Times", American military scientists have developed a micro-integrated block implant that can be directly connected to the animal's brain cells after being implanted into the animal's brain, effectively controlling the animal's behavior. At the same time, these animals are equipped with micro cameras and other devices, which can not only obtain the enemy's voice, image and data intelligence, but also send the collected intelligence back to the base.

Since these animal soldiers are difficult to identify with the naked eye, they will not attract attention even if they appear in enemy areas. More importantly, sending them to the battlefield can not only obtain intelligence that humans cannot collect, but also greatly reduce personnel losses. For example, by sending mice with modified brains into enemy missile silos and controlling their actions with radio signals, relevant missile silo intelligence can be obtained. The micro-cameras tied to the mice can capture detailed images of these areas and send them back to the base, which can also avoid arousing suspicion; dogs equipped with this technology can be used to search for wounded on the battlefield; cockroaches "armed" with brains can place monitoring instruments in enemy military facilities; remote-controlled fish, with detection equipment installed on their bodies, can find mines in the sea and inform the navy of the detailed location of the mines; controlled bats can also fly into enemy rooms to collect intelligence according to the operator's intention after the device is bound to their legs.

It is conceivable that once these high-tech armed animal soldiers are used on the battlefield, they will fundamentally change the face of war. And this "animal army" may become a unique landscape in future wars.

Further reading: The Rebellion of the Newt

Mermaids vs. the Counterattack of Intelligent Creatures

Humans discovered the creature of the newt by accident. A Czech captain named Vantoch was ordered to go to the Indonesian archipelago to find new pearling grounds. He ventured into a local place called "Ghost Bay". There, he really encountered the legendary "sea ghosts", which were actually just a group of newts that could walk slowly on their short hind legs. Vantoch soon discovered that these little guys were very smart, and could even be said to be a group of intelligent creatures. Vantoch even reached an agreement with them: Vantoch provided them with knives and harpoons to defend against their natural enemies, sharks; in return, the newts helped Vantoch to collect pearls on the seabed.

With less harassment from natural enemies, the number of newts increased rapidly. Wantohe transported them to pearl-producing islands by boat, letting them work and reproduce there. However, the speed at which newts multiplied was indeed astonishingly fast. In just a few years, their number increased from the initial 2,000 to 15 billion. In order to solve the problem of "overcrowding of fish", people turned from selling pearls to exporting newt labor. The nature of newts and their rare technical adaptability make them particularly suitable for underwater engineering. A newt only needs a few cents of feed a day and can work underwater for more than 20 hours. The pace of human development of the ocean has accelerated sharply.

The potential of newts is also being tapped. They exchange their labor for machines and explosives from humans, and build modern underwater cities at a depth of 20 to 25 meters. They have their own industrial zones, seaports, transportation lines and residential areas, occupying 60% of all the coasts in the world. The development of newts has also led to an unprecedented increase in the number of people employed in the metal industry, munitions factories, cement, artificial food and other fields on land, and a significant increase in the tonnage of ships and coal production. The newt industry has opened up a new era in human history.

But the competition between humans and newts for living space became increasingly prominent. Finally, the war between newts and humans broke out. Newts destroyed all the ships anchored in the port at the beginning, making the navy lose its combat effectiveness at the beginning. The air force dropped bombs into the sea, and the newts fired submarine guns at the port, turning the port into rubble. The army poured bacteria and chemicals into certain bays, and the newts released poison gas along the coast.

A few weeks later, the newts flooded the mainland in stages and batches. People lived on pieces of land separated by sea water and continued to provide explosives and drilling machines to the newts, which was tantamount to drinking poison to quench thirst.

Finally, a turning point appeared. Fierce ethnic conflicts broke out among the newts, and they began to kill each other. The conflict gradually developed into using biological weapons to attack each other, polluting the entire ocean. Later, all the newts contracted an incurable disease called mycobacterial gill disease. Later, the newts became extinct.

The sedimentation of rivers gradually expanded the land, the ocean retreated little by little, and everything returned to its original state. Humans slowly returned from the mountains to the coast.

Source: Popular Science Times

Author: Liu Jian (Associate Professor of Tianjin Vocational College of Art, Distinguished Expert of China Science Fiction Research Center)

Editor: Wu Tong

Review: Wang Fei

Final judge: Chen Lei