APOPO, a Belgian humanitarian assistance group, is training rats to detect landmines in Mozambique and Angola. The rats are light enough not to trigger the landmines and are able to sniff out landmines with a high degree of efficiency and accuracy.

Scientists at a U.S. weapons laboratory say they have trained bees to sniff out explosives in a project they say could have far-reaching applications for U.S. homeland security and the Iraq war.

An overview of some of the U.S. Military's efforts to learn from the natural world by developing new techniques based on animal behavior, or exploit it directly by enlisting animals directly in warfighting efforts.

To the casual human listener, the love song of a humpback whale sounds magnificently free-flowing and improvised. But fresh mathematical analysis of the song shows there are complex grammatical rules. Using syntax, the whales combine sounds into phrases, which they further weave into hours-long melodies packed with information.

DARPA scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions. The idea is to insert micro-systems at the pupa stage, when the insects can integrate them into their body, so they can be remotely controlled later.

The U.S. military, facing problems in its efforts to train insects or build robots that can mimic their flying abilities, now wants to develop "insect cyborgs" that can go where troops cannot. The Pentagon is seeking applications from researchers to help them develop technology that can be implanted into living insects to control their movement and transmit video or other sensory data back to their handlers.

Engineers funded by the US military have created a neural implant designed to enable a shark's brain signals to be manipulated remotely, controlling the animal's movements, and perhaps even decoding what it is feeling.

A flock of pigeons outfitted with a GPS satellite tracking receiver, air pollution sensors, and a mobile phone backpack are being released over the skies of San Jose, California in an experiment to monitor air pollution.

Scientists at the University of Georgia have developed a method for training wasps to detect chemicals and other susbstances. The technique could be used to detect explosives or toxins in public areas and could be available for commercial use in 5-10 years.

In cutting-edge experiments, scientists have injected human brain cells into monkey fetuses to study the effects. Critics warn that these experiments may accidently produce monkeys with brains more human than animal, posing a new set of ethical issues.