Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been training a unit of dolphins in Sevastopol for military combat. (They're very good at attacking military scuba divers and flagging up mines with buoys, OK?) Unfortunately, the government was due to discontinue the program due to a lack of funding, but Russia has chosen to seize and persevere with its dolphin unit in Crimea.

This may come as a response to the Pentagon's recent decision to double its budget for underwater drones; or maybe someone in the Kremlin is a big fan of Darwin from SeaQuest DSV. The facility is also working on technology to convert dolphins' sonar into visual cues that a human operator could use.

The US are currently the only other country in the world with a military dolphin unit – theirs is based in San Diego, but they're planning to discontinue it in 2017, which means there are only three years left for the two countries to engage in an all-out dolphin battle and redefine the term Cold War.

Both Russia and the US have also been combat training sea lions. What next? Suicide monkeys? Gun toting badgers? And don't think Britain is exempt from using animals as pawns in war: yesterday, the army admitted that it tests equipment by putting body armour on pigs and blowing them up. 

Let's remember a time when mankind was kinder and gentler to our animal friends: