Nowadays it’s nearly impossible to take a walk outside without seeing someone walking their dog. Imagine the ancestors of these dogs. Maybe their ancestors were used by General Aratos to guard his citadel against Philip of Macedon in 243 BC. Perhaps they have ancestors in the middle ages, where dogs sported full coats of chain mail while they followed their masters into battle.
The world has a long and rich history of using animals in warfare. One of the major reasons this was done, was because animals scared people. For instance, in the 3rd century, King Antiochus decided to attack the Galatian invaders. Antiochus gathered sixteen elephants. He marched them across the plain and, when the Galatian cavalry saw them, they were terrified. In fact, they were so frightened that they turned around and trampled all of the Galatian foot soldiers. Elephants were very useful things to have in an army. Not only did they scare the opposing forces, they could tear down wooden fortifications, and they could inflict massive damage in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, elephants were difficult to control in battle. This led to elephants killing their own armies, which was not something that you generally wanted when you were trying to invade a country. Then there were the problems of elephants panicking and fleeing a fight when wounded.
Intelligent creatures such as people, elephants, and dogs are subject to powerful instincts of self-preservation. When animals see an unfamiliar species or a species that preys on them, they tend to flee. This instinct can easily be seen when a mouse is hunted by a cat or a squirrel by a dog. Without this instinct, many animals would be killed because they wouldn’t run away from predators. As such, this instinct saves their lives. This survival instinct was often taken advantage of on a battlefield. A good example can be found in the tactics of King Cyrus of Persia in 456 BC. When King Cyrus was about to fight the cavalry of King Croesus, his confidence plummeted. He didn’t see how he could fight against the cavalry, so he came up with an emergency plan using his knowledge of animal antipathy. Knowing that horses naturally fear and shun camels, the Persians moved their baggage train of camels to the front line while keeping their own camel-tolerant cavalry in the rear. When King Croesus’s cavalry saw and smelled the camels, the horses refused to fight and galloped away, rendering the cavalry useless. In the same way, rams with horns and squealing pigs were historically used to panic elephants. Fire was another way to cause animals panic. In 1398 the Turko-Mongol ruler, Tamerlane decided that he wanted to sack the city of Delhi. The only problem was that Delhi was protected by the Indian sultan’s one hundred and twenty war elephants. Tamerlane usually mounted his troops on war camels, but to get rid of the elephants he decided that it would be much simpler to load the camels with straw and set them on fire. Horrified, the flaming camels ran forward. Upon viewing them the elephants panicked and fled.
Of course, animals could be used in much subtler ways. One of the most discreet was the use of insects and reptiles. It has been theorized that beehives were the first projectile weapons ever used. Although, you could do many things with a beehive besides throw it. The Mayan sacred text, the Popol Vuh describes how when the mountain Hacavitz was attacked, the priests used bumblebees and wasps to defend themselves. They placed the insects in giant gourds and placed them by the village’s gates. When the invaders came near the gates, the priests opened the gourds. Angrily, the insects stung the first thing they saw, which happened to be the invaders. Between 190 and 184 BC, Hannibal had run into trouble during a naval battle against King Eumenes. Being outnumbered, Hannibal sent his men ashore to capture venomous snakes and put them into jars. When Eumenes’s ships descended upon Hannibal’s fleet, his men threw the jars onto their enemy’s ships. At first, Eumenes’s men laughed. When they realized that they had poisonous snakes on the decks, they leapt about trying to get away from them. In this manner, Hannibal managed to defeat his enemy.
Animals have often been used in warfare, and it still occurs in modern times. For instance, police have specially trained dogs that can locate a variety of things from dead bodies to drugs. The use of insects was taken to a whole new level in 1998 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA labs trained honeybees to detect biochemical and explosive agents. A sentence in DARPA’s mission statement for 2003 reads, “Other applications [of insect agents] might involve controlling the distribution of pest organisms to improve operational environments for troops.” In the 1980’s the U.S. Navy trained dolphins and sent them to the Persian Gulf to search for deadly mines and escort oil tankers. In 2003 sea lions, trained to capture enemy divers with leg clamps, were also sent to the Gulf.
As you can see, animals were not only used in warfare in ancient times, but are still used today. Animals have always helped humanity, whether as warriors in battle or as pets in the home, and they will continue to do so as long as they exist. I find it difficult to imagine that there could be a time when animals will not be at humanities side.