Do you know who were the anti tank dogs?
Of course the description is in the name but they were more famous as the dogs you know! The Pavlov’s dogs!
Everyone knows or would have at least heard about the Pavlov’s dogs!
The experiment is a classic one in the field of classic conditioning!
The Pavlov’s dog and bell experiment involved conditioning dogs to associate the sound of a bell with food, causing them to salivate at the sound alone.
This process, known as classical conditioning, demonstrated that a neutral stimulus (the bell) could become a conditioned stimulus after being repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus (food). The experiment showed how behaviors can be learned through association!
But the research did not end there! They were planned for military!
The Soviet military, faced with a shortage of anti-tank weaponry, devised a program to turn dogs into mobile mines!
The dogs were intentionally kept hungry and then trained to associate the underside of a tank with food. Their food bowls were placed under stationary tanks.
Over time, the training was made more realistic by having the tanks’ engines running and adding battle-related distractions like sporadic gunfire, conditioning the dogs to run under the vehicles even in chaotic environments!
The goal was to create a conditioned response where a dog would instinctively run under any enemy tank it encountered on the battlefield in search of food!
Once deployed, each dog was fitted with a harness carrying explosives and a wooden lever that would trigger the detonation upon contact with the tank’s underbelly. This made the mission a one-way, suicide operation for the dog!
It was a dog’s life indeed!
Luckily for them the program was a big failure!
The dogs were trained in sterile conditions and often panicked under actual battlefield fire!
The dogs could not differentiate between friend and enemy tanks!
The Soviet forces primarily used diesel-powered tanks for training, while the German tanks they encountered in battle were mainly petrol-driven. The dogs’ sensitive noses often led them back to friendly Soviet tanks, where the explosives detonated, causing casualties among their own side!
Also the German troops quickly learned of the tactic and issued orders to shoot any dog on the battlefield, further reducing the program’s effectiveness!
Now you know why dogs bark when they hear any bell!
Of course that means they are alert always! Alert also was the legendary police Tukaram Omble AC who gave his life but got the terrorist…
You will always be a hero sir…
Shubh ratri…
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