
Margaret Howe lived with a dolphin for ten weeks in the 1960s - nreece
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2653422/The-woman-taught-dolphin-speak-fallen-love-her.html
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giarc
There was a RadioLab podcast about this story a few months ago (I believe it
was RadioLab). Margaret was asked about the reports of sexual contact between
her and Peter. Her response was, if I can paraphrase, that Peter would get
distracted during the day because of his sexual urges. This would slow down
the training Margaret was trying to do and therefore she would... fulfil his
urges and Peter would then start to complete his training again.

This article fails to mention a few important details that I'm sure the BBC
documentary will. The lead researcher was very much into drug culture and
Margaret said in the podcast that he gave drugs to some of the dolphins (not
Peter) hoping that it would "open their mind" and help with the language
development. I don't remember clearly, but I'm not sure if the podcast
mentioned the timeline of the experiment. I was surprised to read it was only
10 weeks.

~~~
pvaldes
Horrible trainers doing stupid things.

Everybody knows that dolphins can not be safely drugged. They stop to breath
and die if you try to use sedatives or anesthesia.

~~~
giarc
I think they were given LSD or other psychedelics. I think the idea was to
relieve their inhibitions and their language skills would broaden. This is why
we have research ethic boards now.

~~~
pvaldes
This could explain the agressive behaviour cited in several parts of the
article and naively explained as "love". Poor animal.

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pvaldes
Most probably, an uncontrollable and too aggresive male dolphin (caused by
forced isolation and a wrong training) is put down after the experiment. Cause
of death "suicide".

~~~
halviti
He died after refusing to breathe

[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-
dolph...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-dolphin-who-
loved-me)

This same thing happened to one of the dolphins that played flipper on TV
causing the dolphin's trainer to become an anti-captivity activist.

------
dang
Url changed from [http://nypost.com/2014/06/10/the-dolphin-that-fell-in-
love-w...](http://nypost.com/2014/06/10/the-dolphin-that-fell-in-love-with-a-
human/), which points to this. Although unduly sensational, it contains new
information about a historically significant experiment. We can change the URL
to a better source if anybody finds one.

