Temporary Archive: Suzanne Brockmann's Message Board

And seriously, I have huge doubts about it myself. Yes, dolphins can be and are trained for multitudes of duties, but I think discriminating between allies and enemies may be a bit beyond their realm of capabilities. The Navy (who I think, *thankfully*, has been ignoring reporters as much as possible) was saying that it makes a real nice story... but no they aren't training dolphins to shoot terrorists.

If you think about it - it really makes no sense at all. Dolphins might be extremely smart animals - but that's the extent of it. If they could teach animals this skill, it would be a piece of cake to program a computer to do it... both are impossible because of the level of human judgement of circumstances required. Reporters and many others tend to think in terms of Disney... animals and kids can do anything... yeah right.

All you have to do is stop to think of the hundreds of variables of a situation that must be considered when deciding the situation is dangerous... how do you teach that? Much less program it. No it's not something you can teach an animal to do (even a very smart one) and there are somethings computers can't do either... maybe someday but not now.

Mirm