Spy Cats

There was some serious craziness going on during the Cold War and there's hardly a better example than the CIA's Project Acoustic Kitty, which tried to train cats as spies. Yes, it was a real project.

Cats are small, stealthy, and people who aren’t cat lovers will likely ignore a stray without a second glance. For the CIA in the 1960s, this meant cats were the perfect animals to be trained as spies.

The idea was born from B. F. Skinner’s work in operant psychology and behaviour modification. Burrhus Frederick Skinner was an American Psychologist who believed that an animal’s behaviour could be predicted and shaped through behavioural reinforcement in a controlled environment. The bulk of his work relied on what’s become known as a “Skinner Box.”

I wonder if any of the researchers were cat owners. As someone who has been living with cats for about 20 years, I cannot imagine how anyone with any experience with cats could have thought that the idea of training them was workable.