Futility Closet

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Posted in History, Oddities by Greg Ross on January 25th, 2006

During World War II, B.F. Skinner was working on a pigeon-guided missile. Three pigeons inside the missile would guide it by pecking at a screen. The Pentagon didn't take it seriously.

There was also a proposal to attach tiny time bombs to bats and release them to roost in Japanese buildings. The project was tested successful on a fake Japanese city, but the war ended before it could be implemented.

In the 1960s the CIA implanted a battery and a microphone into a cat and an antenna into its tail. They released it near the Soviet compound in Washington D.C., but it was hit and killed by a taxi almost immediately.