Weaponized Animal

"Mr. Powers, you'll notice that all the sharks have laser beams attached to their heads."
—Dr. Evil, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

A Sub-Trope of Attack Animal and Beast of Battle. What could be more dangerous than an animal, wild or not? Mounting weapons on it. Or simply explosives, to add animal cruelty to injury.

See also Weaponized Car. Wikipedia has a category for this. For animals used as weapons, see Grievous Harm with a Body, Shamu Fu, and Abnormal Ammo. For weapons they already have without outside interference see Natural Weapon.

Examples of Weaponized Animal include:


Anime

  • King of Bandit Jing (also known as Jing: King of Bandits): Jing is accompanied by Kir, a talking bird that somehow can attach to his arm and fire "Kir Royales"; extremely destructive green energy bolts. (In one episode it is discovered that Kir's ability is not unique to his species)

Card Games

Comic Books

  • Fables: Talking animals developed various ways to carry and fire various guns and other projectiles during an attempted coup. Hilarious and scary at the same time.
    • And later, the same devices would be put to use so that the Fable animals could take part in the war against the empire.
  • WE 3
  • Brute Force: The good guys were a dolphin, bear, kangaroo, eagle, and lion. The villians were a gorilla, rhino, vulture, shark, and octopus. All of them had their own weapons and Power Armor.

Film

  • Austin Powers provides the page quote.
    • He got them in Goldmember.
  • The movie Leonard Part Six included an ostrich with missile launchers mounted on it (which makes the movie sound far cooler than it actually was).
  • The Brotherhood of the Wolf attach metal armor, claws and fangs to their 'beast' to make it more fearsome and otherwordly.
  • Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole: some of the owls have metal talons, and the bats have blades on their wings.
  • Reluctant Infidel: a cell of bumbling jihadists attempt to attach an explosive vest to a crow, with predictable results

Literature

  • There is an instance of this in The Butter Battle Book.
  • The Green Storm in the Mortal Engines books use undead cyborg Stalker-birds of a variety of sizes for combat and reconnaisance, with even the smallest packing a nasty set of blades on its claws and beak.
    • Their chief Mad Scientist also shares plans for a stealthy Stalker-cat, machine-gun-armed Stalker-centaurs and an explosive-packed, suicide-bombing Stalker-whale that could potentially sink an entire city.
  • The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi: war megodonts (giant genetically-engineered elephants) have carbon fibre armour, blades attached to their tusks and machine-gun cages on their backs.
  • The Incendiary Cat Plot mentioned in the Vorkosigan Saga may or may not be an example of this trope. As it has not been explained in any detail, it's hard to be sure.
  • In the Oscar Wilde short story "The Moon-Faced Man", the narrator plots to kill his neighbor, the titular moon-faced man, using a variation on this. The gent in question had but a single vice: dynamite fishing, which he would engage in every spring without fail. So the narrator goes and gets a dog and teaches it a single trick: to fetch. Then he presents the moon-faced man with a dog that no matter what, will always always always bring back what has been thrown. Of course, the moon-faced man brings his new dog with him the next time he goes fishing...

Live Action TV

Music

Mythology

  • In Russia, there is a legend about Olga the Wise, the wife of prince Igor. The legend is kinda like this: Igor was going about collecting taxes from his subjects. He decided to collect more than was agreed on from the drevlyane tribe. This did not turn out well: apparently, they decided they weren't putting up with his shit and ripped him apart with trees. So, his wife, Olga, decided to avenge him. Among other things, she manipulated and bullied them into paying her tribute, but demanded nothing more than a 6 of birds[1] per house. The drevlyane were more than happy to oblige, thinking they got off easy. However, Olga had her soldiers tie oil-soaked rags to the birds' legs[2] and released them. According to the legend, the pigeons flew back to their nests and the whole city of the drevlyane burned to the ground.

Newspaper Comics

Tabletop Games

  • Orks from Warhammer 40,000 are fond of Squig-bombs and attack squigs.
    • The setting also has grox- large, aggressive, omnivorous dinosaur-like herd animals raised by the Imperium as a food source. Most of the herd are lobotomized to make them more docile and safe to handle ("lobo-grox"), but to protect the herd, a few are instead fitted with a robotic arm tipped with a laspistol ("robo-grox").
  • Similar to the real life example from the Crimea (below), the Empire from Warhammer Fantasy Battle has, among its weapons of war, Herstel-Wenck Pigeon Bombs.

Toys

  • Bionicle: Jaller Mahri had a Hahnah Crab that was equipped with a Cordak Blaster.
    • Pit War Tortoises had mounted Squid Launchers.
    • Thanks to tampering from the Great Beings, the Skopio species have Thornax Launchers on their tails.
  • The Trendmasters Godzilla toyline once included figures of Godzilla and Rodan that had power-up armor which fired toy missiles.

Video Games

  • Mother 3: Gorillas with wrecking balls, hippos with missiles, moles with drill arms, mice with propellers, and so much more.
  • Metal Slug: various slugs are animals, such as elephants, mules, camels, and ostriches.
  • In Resonance of Fate, several enemies are two-legged 'walker' animals (usually seen used to carry heavy loads) fitted with a variety of weapons, from side-mounted gatling-guns and underslung tank-cannons, to flame-throwers for close-up work and heavy explosives for those kamikaze charges...
  • Scribblenauts provides us with the aforementioned laser-sharks as well as a novel item: glue. Glue + large steel spike + elephant + chainsaw = awesome
  • In Tribal Rage, the redneck faction can train explosive pigs.
  • In World of Warcraft, Engineers can create... the Explosive Sheep.
  • Worms created the Explosive Sheep first, as well as featuring such weapons as Mad Cows, Concrete Donkeys, and Mole Bombs. To say nothing of the fact that worms are deploying all of these devices.
  • Transformers: War for Cybertron: the slugs encountered in the Autobots campaign have turrets mounted on them for Optimus and co. to use.
  • Final Fantasy XIII features militarized monsters enhanced with cybernetics and magic which can be summoned from Magitek portals. It's all very flashy. Ironically, they're consistently less fearsome and dangerous than the actual animals they're based on.
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 first featured dolphins equipped with sonar weaponry, as well as Soviet anti-ship squid. The sequel kept the dolphins and introduced attack dogs and attack bears with sonar amplifiers that can paralyze attackers.
    • As an April Fool's joke, the Red Alert 3 website features specs of a new unit: the Mammoth Tank. Unlike the classic Command and Conquer unit it's homaging, though, this was an actual mammoth mounted with gigantic guns.
  • Pokémon Black and White features the new Pokémon Genosect, which is a Bug/Steel type. With a laser cannon on its back. It's species is listed as the 'Paleozoic Pokémon', and there is only one because it was brought back to life by Team Plasma, who modified the laser. It was also stated that it was regarded as the fiercest hunter 300 million years ago. Now imagine if this was a native species in the present timezone.
    • Pokémon also has Blastoise who has cannons under its shell. Octillery can be an example since evolution altered it to become a octopus/tank hybrid with a cannon-shaped mouth.
  • In Okami, Amaterasu, the sun goddess protagonist in white wolf from, can wield various weapons which hover over her back. She starts out with a flaming shield, but can also use other shields, swords, or necklaces, (which are used like a whip, or shot like bullets.)
    • Oki also wields a sword, which hovers over his back when he is in wolf form, like Amaterasu.
  • The flash game Ultimate Crab Battle has a shark named Bobbeh with various weaponry, including Frickin' Laser Beams.
  • In Iji, after the Scrambler is unlocked, "missile ponies" (a pony with missiles) become a reoccurring conversation subject.
  • Turok games famously feature all manner of weapon-toting dinosaurs.
  • One of the three main playable characters in Jet Force Gemini is Lupus, a dog with a laser gun on his back. Later in the game he is upgraded into some sort of jet pack tank dog.
  • In Gears of War, the Locust equip many of their various warbeasts with weapons and/or amour.
  • The laser-shooting Toaster Dog in Secret of Evermore.
  • In Rome: Total War one of the earliest units you can create is a herd of pigs. As you might suspect pigs are not fearsome fighters. So instead you would cover the pigs in oil, set them alight and hope they charge into the enemy. The aim was to break up formations, demoralize the men and spook any animals on the opposing side.

Western Animation

Burns: I suggest you leave immediately.
Homer: Or what? You'll release the dogs, or the bees, or the dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you? Well, go ahead -- do your worst! Burns slams the door and locks it He locked the door! I'll show him -- rings the doorbell and runs away

  • In Centurions , Doc Terror once broke out of a correctional facility using cyborg mice with little flamethrowers.
  • The heroes and villains alike in Hero: 108 routinely mount cannons on turtles and chameleons, respectively, and aren't above weaponizing other animals.
  • In The Venture Bros, Baron Underbeit keeps "tiger bombs" to take care of traitors.
  • The cult classic Dino Riders had a race of good Humanoid Aliens (possibly far-removed descendants of human space colonists) fighting a race of evil reptilian/amphibian/fishy aliens. They somehow ended up back on prehistoric Earth, and the first thing they thought to do was strap a bunch of armor and lasers and rockets to the various dinosaurs they found.

Web Original

Real Life

  • The anti-tank dog is possibly the most famous and tragic real-life example.
    • Version 1.0 was hilarious instead. The idea was that the dog would drop the payload under the tank, then come back, thus saving considerable expense that, in later versions, would have to be sunk into training a new dog from the ground up. The problem was that, as is usually the case with dogs, they were much smarter than the people who came up with the idea gave them credit for; they would emerge from the trenches, decide that all this gunfire nonsense was way hotter than they were willing to deal with...so they'd just drop their payload right there and return to the trenches.
    • There were also sometimes issues with the dogs not recognizing that an enemy tank was a tank due to different factors making it have a different smell [3]
  • War elephants were often equipped with huge blades on their tusks, to add even more power to an already hellishly dangerous fighting force.
    • And some were trained to use a ball and chain with their trunks in case foot soldiers got too close.
  • The US army investigated the use of bats mounted with napalm-based explosives. The bats were to be released over a city, find places to roost amongst the buildings, then explode, lighting countless fires. In practice, the bats were kept in hibernation until released, most didn't come out of hibernation fast enough and went splat instead.
    • They had a solution for the splatting problem, involving parachuting the bats down giving them time to wake up. Still wasn't used in warfare because the atomic bomb was finished first.
  • Another WW 2 US military example: Pigeons are relatively well known in behavioral psychology circles for being easily programmable. That is to say, if you teach them to peck at a colored light to get food, and they will obsessively peck at that light hundreds of times a minute until they get it. This was exploited by teaching them to recognize aerial photos of German and Japanese warships and peck at them. The pigeons were then loaded into the nose-cones of bombs and missiles behind a glass screen. Their pecking would tilt the screen in the direction of the ship and steer the bomb. The test-runs worked a charm, but the military flat-out refused to use such a bizarre weapon, and the inventor went on to develop it as a way of spotting life-rafts from planes after the war (this being the days before thermal imaging).
  • The US military had a program in place to train dolphins to attack enemy divers. The only real success was getting dolphins to the point of being able to disarm mines the hard way.
  • More than one cockfight organizer has livened things up by attaching bits of razor blade to the cockerels' spurs. At least one organizer has been been disemboweled by his own enraged bird as a result.
  • According to Pliny the Elder, the ancient Romans would cover pigs in oil and light them on fire, then release them into the enemy armies. Their squealing could also spook other animals, which was especially dangerous when the enemy had elephants. (It also presumably sped up the process of serving a victory feast afterwards.) However, it's uncertain whether or not this really happened.
  • During the Crimean War, the Russians trained pigeons to associate a person with a red coat with food. Then they tied a grenade to it and released it during a battle...
  1. ↑ 3 sparrows and 3 pigeons
  2. ↑ The details of this part are actually depends on the version. Wikipedia says

    sulfur bound with small pieces of cloth

    . The book "The Mongols in Russia" says had

    rags steeped in oil tied to their wings and ignited.

  3. ↑ This is attributed to the fuel the vehicles used. Germans generally used gasoline, Russians generally used diesel
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