The Trouble-Sniffing Gerbils

The Trouble-Sniffing Gerbils ranks 7th in the list of Curious Examples of Animals in Warfare. MI5 came up with the notion in the 1970s. Gerbils can detect elevated adrenalin levels in human sweat, therefore they might be trained to sniff out spies, terrorists, and other subversive operators. MI5 quickly rejected the idea, but it was picked up by Canadian experts who believed they could employ gerbils in airports for the same purposes.

They proposed that the fuzzy rodents may be trained to push a lever when they detected abnormal adrenalin levels using Pavlovian responses. They may then be maintained at airport immigration queues, with fans silently wafting the aromas of all the travelers towards them. The scheme was carried out by Shin Bet, Israel's internal security department, who utilized gerbils at Tel Aviv airport. Unfortunately, they quickly realized that, instead of spies and terrorists, the rodents were picking up on a lot of false positives, most of which were people carrying heavy luggage or simply worried fliers.