Blame this. Particularly if you are a researcher from the 23rd Century AD wondering which fool gave those bioengineers the original horrible idea. Sorry, Future Dudes, I just write roleplaying game material.
Testudops
There have been many bioengeered, transgenetic Monstrosities of Science banned by the Seventh Geneva Convention of 2095: but Testudops are perhaps unique in the fact that the driving impetus to get them banned so quickly was because the concept was in such bad taste. Oh, they would have been banned anyway. But this particular Monstrosity gof fast-tracked.
The principle was sound enough, for given ethical values of ‘sound.’ Several species of turtles were redesigned to be living explosive caltrops: their shells were altered to make them instant shrapnel in an explosion, their brains were rewired to make the smell of humans slightly attractive, and a special explosive-producing organ was added just under the shell. The organ, of course, required a particular chemical to be activated; but once it was activated, starting about twelve hours later the turtle would become an armed and primed Testudop.
It took a while to calibrate making Testudops just fragile enough to explode when stepped on while still being tough enough to survive in the wild for long enough, but once that problem was licked the creatures were immediately marketed for use as long-term interdiction devices. They’re easy enough to avoid on the road or sidewalk: but in any kind of grass or cover Testudops are unpredictable and dangerous. They won’t kill somebody outright, but the charge is easily capable of shredding somebody’s foot.
As mentioned before, Testudops were swiftly banned by the reputable nations of Earth. Projects like mobile, living minefields with no control mechanism typically are. Unfortunately, Testudops were designed to reproduce, because the mom-and-pop private weaponized biology lab that created them in the first place thought that it’d be a selling point. Certainly the various terrorist organizations and more unsavory revolutionary groups that currently use Testudops think that having a breeding colony is cost effective…