Israeli Mine-Detecting Pigs

My friend Tim just returned from London, where in addition to seeing my beloved Arsenal defeat Bolton at the Emirates Stadium he visited "The Animals' War" exhibit at the Imperial War Museum. I'll undoubtedly generate several posts from Tim's comments and photos, the first of which concerns the use of pigs as mine detectors in Israel, of all places.

Tim's grainy photo of an Israeli soldier working with his demining pig led me to track down more about this story. Perhaps the best overview comes in an article (here) by Jennette Townsend in the Journal of Research, Development and Technology in Mine Action. Townsend's 2003 report charts the work of animal trainer Giva Zin, who began his career in the Israeli army training dogs to detect mines and roadside bombs. As Zin notes, "While dogs can detect landmines on the surface of the ground, they have difficulty detecting mines buried deep in the ground," making the use of pigs more logical. Zin has trained his pigs to find the mine and then sit down, although some of the time the pigs have detonated the mines (a training version, not a high explosive, thankfully) with their snouts. Clearly, though, there may be potential in using pigs in mine detection, not in Israel, really, but in other areas of the world.

While the main reason that Giva Zin's research won't likely be applied in Israel is that suicide bombing is more of an issue than mines, the fact that pigs are not very popular in Israel. As Zin notes, "Jews don't like pigs. Even Jews who are not religious have a strong aversion to pigs." He has apparently been called stupid for working with pigs, which as a food item are treif -- non-kosher. Because there no religious prohibition against looking at pigs or touching them, Zin hopes that Israeli attitudes about this use of pigs will change. As he concludes, "I believe that even God likes my idea because I am using the pig for a good reason. Maybe in the future, after pigs have been used successfully in other regions, or after research confirms that pigs can be used for demining, Israelis will accept them for use on their own land."

The photo shows Giva Zin training a pig at Kibbutz Lahav in Israel.

Revising Roald Dahl (Or Not) in the UK

One of the great pleasures of the internet is having weekly access to Chuck Shepherd's long-running feature News of the Weird without having to pick up my local alternative weekly and without an editor cutting out stuff they don't think would fly with our local audience. In last week's version I heard of yet another instance of British sensitivity (perhaps over-sensitivity is a better word) to Muslims. Under the headline "We Must Never Offend Anyone," Shepherd refers to a March 16, 2007 report in London's Daily Telegraph of how the head teacher at a school in Huddersfield changed the title of a student production of Roald Dahl's "The Three Little Pigs" (from Revolting Rhymes of 1982) to "The Three Little Puppies" to avoid making Muslim children feel uncomfortable singing about pigs. As it turns out, Mohammed Imran, a spokesman for the local Muslim community, pointed out that Islam does not prohibit the mentioning of pigs, condemning this change as unnecessary and the school overruled the teacher. Paul Stokes' article about the "controversy" (so to speak) "Three Little Piggies Win A Reprieve" in the Telegraph can be found here.

By the way, Dahl's poem has some great opening lines worth repeating:

The animal I really dig,
Above all others is the pig.
Pigs are noble. Pigs are clever,
Pigs are courteous. However,
Now and then, to break this rule,
One meets a pig who is a fool.

A Threat of "Porcine Tactics" Against Muslims

My comrade Sean Smith of the Wilmore City Ale House sent me news from Norway, where anti-immigrant politicians threatened to use "porcine tactics" to chase Muslims from the public square in Bergen (left) if they use it for prayer while awaiting completion of their mosque. According to the article in Aftenposten, a city council member named Kenneth Rasmussen suggested that "Bergen residents should hang up pig's feet and play pig squeals over loudspeakers to scare off Muslims, and claimed these tactics worked when he was a soldier for the United Nations in Somalia and Lebanon in the 1990s." Lovely. Apparently, though, this was just a threat, as I've found no articles that indicate that members of the "extreme populist party" ever did anything. I guess they were just trying to be "provocative."