Dolphin ‘killed himself: A dolphin appeared to have committed suicide when he was separated from a woman who used to have sex with him
Margaret Howe Lovatt, a young woman, joined a NASA-funded project to communicate with dolphins in the early 1960s.
Given that dolphins have brains at least as large as humans’, the idea was that by learning how intelligent species “talk” to each other, we could develop techniques for communicating with extraterrestrials.
Margaret, who was only 20 at the time, persuaded project director Gregory Bateson to let her work with the dolphins that John Lilly, a neuroscientist, was keeping on the Caribbean island of St Thomas.
Margaret said they were three dolphins named Peter, Pamela, and Sissy.
Margaret later commented on the dolphins, saying: “Sissy was the tallest of the bunch. She was pushy and loud, and she sort of ran the show. Pamela was shy and afraid. Peter was a young man. He was sexually maturing and a little naughty.”
Peter and Margaret formed an unusual bond. He became envious if she spent too much time with the other dolphins, and the feeling was mutual to some extent.
“That relationship of having to be together sort of turned into really enjoying being together, and wanting to be together, and missing him when he was not there,” Margaret told the BBC.
Although some words were more difficult to form than others, Peter, more than his two companions, became quite skilled at forming English words by forcing air through his blowhole.
Read Also: 22-year-old-woman-allegedly-poisons-her-4-stepchildren-leading-to-the-death-of-three-of-them
2023-poll-tinubu-support-group-takes-off-in-october-lawmaker
Margaret recalled: “‘M’ was very difficult. My name. Hello, ‘M’argaret. I worked on the ‘M’ sound and he eventually rolled over to bubble it through the water. That ‘M’, he worked on so hard.”
Peter and Margaret grew closer, and their affection became physical.
She stated: “He was extremely curious about my anatomy. He would come up and stare at the back of my knee for a long time if I was sitting here with my legs in the water. He was intrigued by it and wanted to know how it worked.”
Margaret began giving Peter sexual relief whenever he became too sexually aroused to participate in her experiments, according to an infamous profile published in Hustler magazine.
“It was just easier to incorporate that and let it happen,” she explained. It was very valuable, and it was very gentle.
“Peter knew I was there, Peter knew I was there… Again, it was sexual on his part, but not sexual on mine — perhaps sensuous.
“It would just become a part of what was going on, like an itch, and we would get rid of it, scratch it and we would be done and moved on.”
“It seemed to me that it made the bond closer,” she added. Not because of the sexual activity, but because they do not have to keep breaking.
“And that was really all there was to it. I went to get to know Peter. That was a characteristic of Peter.”
She explained: “[The sex] wasn’t private. People could observe it.”
But eventually, NASA sent a young astronomer, Carl Sagan, to report on the progress John Lilly was making and soon after that, the agency pulled the plug on the experiments.
And that spelt the end for Margaret and Peter’s strange relationship.
Soon after being separated from Lovatt, Peter drowned in what appeared to be a suicide.
Dolphins need to surface regularly to breathe, and he appeared to deliberately stay submerged until he suffocated.
It’s not an isolated event. Ric O’Barry from animal rights organisation The Dolphin Project explained: “Dolphins are not automatic air-breathers like we are. Every breath is a conscious effort.
“If life becomes too unbearable, the dolphins just take a breath and they sink to the bottom. They don’t take the next breath.”
Life was apparently too unbearable for Peter.
Margaret said: “He wasn’t going to be unhappy, he was just gone. And that was OK.”
