{"id":4092,"date":"2026-02-20T10:00:48","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T10:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/mi5-wanted-gerbils-to-catch-undercover-spies\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T10:00:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T10:00:50","slug":"mi5-wanted-gerbils-to-catch-undercover-spies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/mi5-wanted-gerbils-to-catch-undercover-spies\/","title":{"rendered":"MI5 wanted Gerbils to catch undercover spies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>2026-02-20 10:00:47<\/b><br \/>\n<BR>MI5 once considered using gerbils to catch undercover spies by smelling their sweat.<BR><br \/>\nLord Jonathan Evans, 68, the former director general of the spy agency, read a classified dossier titled Gerbils Use in Counterintelligence, and it detailed a proposal for creating a lie detector in which a suspect would place their hand into a box containing the rodents.<BR><br \/>\nAnd if the gerbils smelled stress-related hormones in a suspect&#8217;s sweat, the animals &#8220;push a wheel or something and a light comes on, and that tells you whether this is true or false&#8221;.<BR><br \/>\nHowever, the idea never came to fruition due to one small issue.<BR><br \/>\nAppearing on a recent episode of The Rest is Classified podcast, Lord Evans &#8211; who was head of MI5 from April 2007 until April 2013 &#8211; told hosts, 40-year-old former CIA analyst-and-novelist David McCloskey, and 52-year-old BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera: &#8220;The only problem with this technology is that it doesn\u2019t actually work.&#8221;<BR><br \/>\nLord Evans then joked: &#8220;I thought that was really going to solve counter-espionage challenges &#8211; but there you go. You have to take risks. We normally like our pigeons, but we&#8217;ve introduced gerbils into the spy world now.&#8221;<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Visit Bang Bizarre (main website) <\/a><br \/>\n<br \/><script src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player\/xtbac.js\" data-video=\"\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2026-02-20 10:00:47 MI5 once considered using gerbils to catch undercover spies by smelling their sweat. Lord Jonathan Evans, 68, the former director general of the spy agency, read a classified&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4093,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bizarre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4094,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092\/revisions\/4094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}