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The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong (2014)
- OnlyRepliesToBS 8y agodolphin disagrees
- jobigoud 8y agoI had read about these stories separately, the consensual, interspecies sex and the dolphin suicide, but for some reason I failed to realized or had forgotten it was the same dolphin. I admit I sort of fail to understand the outrage about the sex thing and about the attempt to teach it English. I'm probably naïve but I still think some basic form of communication should be possible, like with great apes.
- newqer 8y agoI think the mindset of the 60's was way different. Today nobody blinks twice when a horse needs to be manually gotten-off to ship off the semen to other parts of the word.
- VBprogrammer 8y agoI think the difference is that in the horse example one presumes the horse does not enjoy it and the aim is to breed the horse. In the dolphin example the dolphin appeared to have a romantic attachment to the lady researcher and thus enjoyed the experience. That's still weird in this day and age.
- ThrowMeDown01 8y ago> the horse does not enjoy it That's a bold statement. I don't even know where to begin, there are so many levels here. Like, why would you even make such a claim? I mean I'm not against the claim per se, but it does not seem like you have any evidence, or that you even looked for it. Seems to come right out of some human moral position instead, one that is not rooted in nature, given how many "weird" sex stories and video documentation we can find easily these days about all kinds of animals. Like dogs humping pillows, chimpanzee "using" a frog, quite a few stories about dolphins, etc. Back to the human/dolphin story here, there also is a pretty well-known (or at least well-published) "man had sex with female dolphin" story, example article: https://www.unilad.co.uk/animals/guy-who-had-sex-with-a-dolphin-explains-how-it-happened/ https://www.unilad.co.uk/animals/guy-who-had-sex-with-a-dolp...
- VBprogrammer 8y agoTry not to get outraged by your own misquote. I clearly said "one presumes", as in without evidence. If there was a case where a horse was infatuated with the person doing the deed and the person was doing it for the sole purpose of the horses enjoyment then that'd be just as weird. Clearly the weirdness is rooted in human morality. I don't think it's unusual to judge the behaviours of humans differently to animals. Otherwise it'd be acceptable to fight to the death over "access" to females; sexual consent would be a very loose concept and defecation on street corners would be acceptable.
- Balero 8y agoFrom a moral standpoint, it doesn't matter if the horse enjoys it. The point is the get the semen, not for the horse to enjoy it. Whereas with the dolphin example, the point was for the dolphin to enjoy it. There was no "morally purer" point.
- mlevental 8y agoare you saying it's not non-consensual sex because the point is not for the horse to enjoy it but it is non-sensual sex with the dolphin because the point is for the dolphin to enjoy it.
- Balero 8y agoI'm saying that intent informs morality. eg: Murder and Man Slaughter.
- mlevental 8y agoso if i rape someone and i didn't intend for them to enjoy it then it's not rape? or is it that the person hasn't been raped?
- krageon 8y agoYou escalated your example a bit fast (putting it squarely in the territory of a maybe overly emotional argument), but you touch on a not unreasonable question. Does the horse's right to decide who it has sex with not factor into this decision at all?
- netcan 8y agoI think that agricultural breeding stuff also wierds people out a little, on first hearing. Our instinct to notice this sort of impropriaty is keen. But being an agriculture practice, goal-oriented... most people leave it at weird and move on. Here, there's more eccentricity. LSD, interspecies communication, alien languages, animal personhood.... It doesn't take many leaps to get to "drug fueled bestiality."
- coldtea 8y ago>Today nobody blinks twice when a horse needs to be manually gotten-off to ship off the semen to other parts of the word. That's perhaps a city thing. In farms people did similar things (to cows etc) all the time as part of routine job.
- nerdponx 8y agoYup. This is literally where milk comes from.
- coldtea 8y agoYeah, that too, though I was thinking of this: http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/reprod/semeneval/bull.html http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/reprod/semenev...
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- hammock 8y agoGoodness I hope not.
- jki275 8y agoI'm relatively certain that's not where any milk I've ever had came from...
- logfromblammo 8y agoHeifers don't produce milk until after calving. It's a whole lot easier managing artificial insemination than a live bull. So yes, that is where the milk comes from.
- jki275 8y agoYou missed the point...
- deleted 8y ago
- mannykannot 8y agoI notice that your analogy ends with the collection of the semen...
- mc32 8y agoAs others pont out, the purpose matters. It’s like when people go to a sperm bank and do what thry need to do. The context is different. Context is important in these things.
- dTal 8y agoI think a better analogy is the q-tip method of relieving a female cat in heat. They have a need, it is interfering with day-to-day life, you help them out. I'm more intrigued by the moral code that finds sexually stimulating an animal on its request morally wrong, but force-feeding them LSD a-okay.
- peteretep 8y ago> the consensual As a species, we’ve pretty universally said that some humans can’t legally/morally consent. A prisoner can’t consent to sex with their captors, even if they want to. A minor can’t consent to sex with an adult, even if they want to. In short, I think declaring this as consensual is in question, rather than assumed. The power disparity here is huge between human and dolphin, in this context.
- quaice 8y agoCan a captor consent to their prisoner? This is the dynamic here.
- swebs 8y agoYou're mixing up a legal definition with a colloquial one.
- ben_w 8y agoBecause I have never found the topic at all disturbing, a lot of zoos have come out to me (two on hacker news, even!). As a result, really terrible arguments about this topic, pro and con, are something I’ve seen far too much of. The topic of consent also ties in with one of my AI philosophy interests: what counts as a mind capable of being wronged. I don’t know the answer. Suffering? What is that, though? We can all make something that looks like it’s suffering but is really just a video recorder of ourselves acting. Worse, on the other hand, we probably literally cannot percieve all forms of suffering: the squeaking of a dog toy is mimicking the sound of a rodent suffering, why would we be better, why would we have evolved to recognise the pain in our prey? I don’t know where the capacity to suffer begins or ends, if it’s binary or shades of grey. That’s why I’m vegetarian (nothing weirder to me than someone chomping down on a beef burger while they say cows can’t consent), and I would be vegan if I had more self control. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong to eat meat —again, I don’t know if they can suffer, I’d just rather needlessly restrict my diet than make the other error. Pascal’s Wager for animal welfare, if you will. And on the topic of bad arguments, noticing that hypocrisy doesn’t make the sexual act okay: if they’re able to suffer, meat is bad and consent becomes necessary. If someone comes out to me, the moral code I apply is “can that particular animal win a fight with you if they wanted to?” (it would be “are they enthusiastic?” but I don’t know how to judge that, especially second hand). This generally changes the anti-argument from consent to informed consent, which brings up the spectacular everyone’s-a-failure counterpoint that interspecies STDs just don’t seem to have any research, (gee, I wonder why :P) so even the humans can’t give informed consent.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- DoreenMichele 8y agoI sort of fail to understand the outrage about the sex thing I will suggest that, in this case, the outrage may be rooted in the fact that the dolphin literally killed itself. She didn't masturbate the dolphin for her own sexual pleasure. To her, it was a perfunctory part of her job. It was expedient, to free up time to teach the dolphin. And no one stopped to wonder what the emotional and psychological consequences would be for the dolphin. It was smart enough to try to teach language to, but then it was simultaneously assumed to be a "dumb animal" just needing to ejaculate, like that's a necessary bodily function like peeing and that's it. But the dolphin apparently experienced emotional bonding and was completely devastated when separated from her and literally committed suicide because of it. So I think on some level people are reacting not to the "sex" per se, but to the "You did a thing that caused an intelligent creature to want to be dead because of the thing you did. Seriously? What is wrong with you?"
- Haghn 8y agoThevet, thank you for the quality of your submissions. I really enjoy reading about these little-known pieces of history.
- trollied 8y agoThere's a really good documentary about this: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3822614/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3822614/ The BBC showed it a few years ago, it's fascinating: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b046w2n8 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b046w2n8
- eggy 8y agoI heard an interview with the researcher on the radio while I was driving to work a few weeks ago, and it floored me. I then thought about the movie with George C. Scott, 'Day of the Dolphin', which my Dad took me to see when I was nine. I cried at the ending (no spoiler here, see the movie!).
- have_faith 8y agoDefinitely gave me vibes of The Shape of Water: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5580390/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5580390/
- ggm 8y agoContext for some of what's in 'the day of the dolphin' by Robert Merle which I now understand is fictionalized from the Lilly story. Szilards 'the voice of the dolphins' story is much more a political work post bomb physiscs career.
- HocusLocus 8y agoHere are the remains of Dolphin House, https://zoom.earth/#18.318131,-64.859424,19z,sat https://zoom.earth/#18.318131,-64.859424,19z,sat We used to sail past it in the 1970s, and the buildings were abandoned but had roofs then. Back in 2011 there were plans to develop the area but I guess they fell through. Back then the risque part of the story was well known, though the LSD experiments were not. They had it all backwards, the LSD should have generated an outcry instead. Mammals are similar enough that the scent of female human would surely provoke such a response.
- jessaustin 8y agoMammals are similar enough that the scent of female human would surely provoke such a response. This couldn't possibly be correct. Female humans don't need to worry about e.g. amorous stallions, bulls, or even male chimpanzees. The fact that sexual relations of some sort have occasionally taken place between different species doesn't make anything about it "sure". If it were, mammals would waste a lot of time and energy on behavior that does not contribute to genetic fitness. Besides dolphins don't have olfactory nerves.
- Angostura 8y agoWeirdly when working in the Peruvian rainforest we did have to warn women about an amorous tapir. He would become very boisterous and would also come into camp and take knickers off the washing line.
- philshem 8y agoHere's the Radiolab podcast about it (2015) https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/home-where-your-dolphin-is_podmash https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/home-where-your-dolphin-is...
- julioneander 8y agoSide-note, this project was one of the inspirations behind the cult-classic Ecco the Dolphin game for the Sega Genesis This video explains it very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xUvhUK8Dv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xUvhUK8Dv8
- trollied 8y agoRelevant Vice article: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/exmjpz/the-ketamine-secrets-of-segas-ecco-the-dolphin-347 https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/exmjpz/the-ketamine-secre...
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- destinator 8y agoThe Dollop podcast did a hilarious episode on this. https://thedollop.net/wp/episode-8-dollop/ https://thedollop.net/wp/episode-8-dollop/
- SapporoChris 8y agoThis is such an out there article, I'm not surprised at the lack of comments. I suspect very few want to comment and possibly be associated with zoophila. It did remind me of a site I stumbled upon in the 90's possibly later describing in a fairly clinical manner how to have sex with a dolphin. It is not graphic at all, but definately NSFW. Not Safe For Work! https://web.archive.org/web/20040131140419/http://www.dolphinsex.org:80/ https://web.archive.org/web/20040131140419/http://www.dolphi... I'm not attracted to dolphins, but my purient interests found the site interesting and amusing.
- coolaliasbro 8y agoI recall when my college roommate showed that site to the rest of the apartment. The combination of hilarity and incredulity was intense.
- kingkawn 8y agoPoor Peter
- GrifMD 8y agoThis story pops up from time to time. There's an old Rooster Teeth video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prmx0lYBTko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prmx0lYBTko
- goldcountry 8y agoI very highly recommend reading up on Dr. John Lilly, easily one of the most interesting scientists during that era. Along with interspecies communication, he heavily researched psychedelic drug experiences and combining them with sensory deprivation tanks. He became heavily addicted to ketamine (reports say that he would come to work every day with a spray bottle full of ketamine, and noisily snort it throughout the day), and eventually became convinced of the existence of a cosmic organization called the Earth Coincidence Control Office (E.C.C.O.), which directed the actions of individuals on Earth. His story is also the inspiration for the video game Ecco the Dolphin.
- jimjag 8y agoSNL did a pretty funny skit semi-based on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zq5kWvp528 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zq5kWvp528