Robot tuna

This writer has to confess that he had pretty much no interest in ever seeing "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" until reading this review in Empire Online.

Read the whole thing if you want, but there was one line that piqued my interest:

"G.I. Joe has a robot tuna."

There were no other details in the review about the tuna. Do the good guys employ the robot tuna, or does Cobra use military fish for evil?

Do weaponized tuna explode after being caught by tuna fisherman, disrupting the world's fish supplies and forcing people to eat more red meat, gradually increasing the free world's risk of heart attack and stroke until Cobra is ready to strike?

Ridiculous, right?

No.

Turns out a little research, AKA a Google search, turns up a 2008 article in Information Week about how the real U.S. Office of Naval Research awarded a grant to some Massachusetts researchers to develop an actual robotic tuna.

The device is intended to mimic the bluefin tuna's anatomy and swimming prowess, and according to the article, could be used by the U.S. military for underwater surveillance missions.