Acoustic Kitty

The Cold War was a great motivator for innovation. Cold War research was responsible for such useful research developments as the microwave oven, GPS, and the integrated circuit. And then, there's Acoustic Kitty, a covert CIA research project designed to train cats - cats with implanted microphones, that is - to conduct espionage.


Fig. 1: Normal cat. Suspect nothing.

The Wikipedia entry is so great, I'm just going to let it speak for itself (emphasis added).

Acoustic Kitty was a CIA project launched in the 1960s attempting to use cats in spy missions. A battery and a microphone were implanted into a cat and an antenna into its tail. Due to problems with distraction, the cat's sense of hunger had to be removed in another operation. Surgical and training expenses are thought to have amounted to over $20 million.

The first cat mission was eavesdropping on two men in a park outside the Soviet compound on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C.. The cat was released nearby, but was hit and killed by a taxi almost immediately. Shortly thereafter the project was considered a failure and declared to be a total loss.

I wonder why the cat was so quick to get hit by a car? Maybe because they surgically removed its sense of hunger.