teach dolphin english experiment

Margaret Howe Lovatt And The Government Experiment That Led Her To Intimate Relations With A Dolphin

In the mid-1960s, margaret howe lovatt was tasked with training and observing dolphins on st. thomas. over the years, she developed an intimate relationship with a dolphin named peter..

When a young Carl Sagan visited St. Thomas’ Dolphin Point laboratory in 1964, he likely didn’t realize how controversial the setting would become.

Sagan belonged to a secretive group called “The Order of the Dolphin” — which, despite its name, focused on searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Also in the group was the eccentric neuroscientist Dr. John Lilly. His 1961 quasi-sci-fi book Man and Dolphin highlighted the theory that dolphins wanted to (and likely could) communicate with humans. Lilly’s writings sparked a scientific interest in interspecies communication that set in motion an experiment that went a bit awry with a young woman named Margaret Lovatt.

Trying To Connect Dolphins And Humans

Astronomer Frank Drake headed the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. He’d spearheaded Project Ozma, the search for extraterrestrial life through radio waves emitted from other planets.

Upon reading Lilly’s book, Drake excitedly drew parallels between his own work and Lilly’s. Drake helped the doctor secure funding from NASA and other government entities in order to realize his vision: a communicative bridge between human and dolphin.

John Lilly then built a laboratory housing a workspace on the upper level and a dolphin enclosure on the bottom. Tucked away on the picturesque shore of the Caribbean, he called the alabaster building Dolphin Point.

When 23-year-old Margaret Howe Lovatt realized that the lab existed, she drove there out of sheer curiosity. She fondly remembered stories from her youth where talking animals were some of her favorite characters. She’d hoped to somehow witness the breakthrough that could see those stories become reality.

Arriving at the lab, Lovatt encountered its director, Gregory Bateson, a famous anthropologist in his own right. When Bateson inquired as to Lovatt’s presence, she replied, “Well, I heard you had dolphins … and I thought I’d come and see if there was anything I could do.”

Bateson allowed Lovatt to watch the dolphins. Perhaps wanting to make her feel useful, he asked her to take notes while observing them. Both he and Lilly realized her intuitiveness, despite any lack of training and offered her an open invitation to the lab.

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Margaret Howe Lovatt Becomes A Diligent Researcher

Soon Margaret Howe Lovatt’s dedication to Dr. Lilly’s project intensified. She worked diligently with the dolphins, named Pamela, Sissy, and Peter. Through daily lessons, she encouraged them to create human-esque sounds.

But the process was becoming tedious with little indication of progress.

Margaret Howe Lovatt hated leaving in the evenings and still feeling that there was much work left to do. So she convinced Lilly to let her live in the lab, waterproofing the upper rooms and flooding them with a couple feet of water. This way, human and dolphin could occupy the same space.

Lovatt chose Peter for the revamped, immersive language experiment. They co-existed in the lab six days of the week, and on the seventh day, Peter spent time in the enclosure with Pamela and Sissy.

Through all Peter’s speech lessons and voice training, Lovatt learned that:

“when we had nothing to do was when we did the most … he was very, very interested in my anatomy. If I was sitting here and my legs were in the water, he would come up and look at the back of my knee for a long time. He wanted to know how that thing worked and I was so charmed by it.”

Charmed might not be the word to describe how Lovatt felt when Peter, an adolescent dolphin with certain urges, became a bit more… excited. She later told interviewers that he “would rub himself on my knee, my foot or my hand.” Moving Peter back down to the enclosure each time this happened became a logistical nightmare.

So, reluctantly, Margaret Lovatt decided to satisfy the sexual urges of the dolphin manually. “It was just easier to incorporate that and let it happen … it would just become part of what was going on, like an itch, just get rid of that scratch and we would be done and move on.”

Lovatt insists:

“It wasn’t sexual on my part … sensuous perhaps. It seemed to me that it made the bond closer. Not because of the sexual activity, but because of the lack of having to keep breaking. And that’s really all it was. I was there to get to know Peter. That was part of Peter.”

Meanwhile, Drake’s curiosity about Lilly’s progress grew. He sent one of his colleagues, the 30-year-old Sagan, to check the goings-on at Dolphin Point.

Drake was disappointed to learn that the nature of the experiment was not as he’d hoped; he’d expected progress in deciphering the dolphin language. This was likely the beginning of the end for Lilly and his crew’s funding. Nevertheless, Lovatt’s attachment to Peter grew, even as the project waned.

But by 1966, John Lilly was more enthralled with the mind-altering power of LSD than he was with dolphins. Lilly was introduced to the drug at a Hollywood party by the wife of Ivan Tors, the producer of the movie Flipper . “I saw John go from a scientist with a white coat to a full blown hippy,” Lillie’s friend Ric O’Barry recalled.

Lilly belonged to an exclusive group of scientists licensed by the government to research the effects of LSD. He dosed both himself and the dolphins at the lab. (Though not Peter, at Lovatt’s insistence.) Luckily the drug seemed to have little to no effect on the dolphins. However, Lilly’s new cavalier attitude towards the animal’s safety alienated Bateson and put a stop to the lab’s funding.

Thus Margaret Howe Lovatt’s live-in experience with a dolphin ended. “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 wasn’t there,” she reflects. Lovatt balked at Peter’s departure to Lilly’s cramped Miami lab with little sunlight.

A few weeks later, some terrible news: “John called me himself to tell me” Lovatt notes. “He said Peter had committed suicide.”

Ric O’Barry of the Dolphin Project and Lilly’s friend validates the use of the term suicide. “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.”

A heartbroken Peter didn’t understand the separation. The sorrow of losing the relationship was too much. Margaret Howe Lovatt was saddened but ultimately relieved that Peter the dolphin didn’t need to endure life at the confined Miami lab. “He wasn’t going to be unhappy, he was just gone. And that was OK.”

Lovatt remained in St. Thomas after the failed experiment. She married the original photographer that worked on the project. Together, they had three daughters and converted the abandoned Dolphin Point laboratory into a home for their family.

Margaret Howe Lovatt didn’t speak publicly of the experiment for nearly 50 years. Recently, however she granted interviews to Christopher Riley for his documentary on the project, the aptly named The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins .

After this look at Margaret Howe Lovatt and the strange experiments that she participated in with dolphins, learn more about how dolphins communicate . Then, read up on the fascinating development of military dolphins .

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Talking dolphins and the love story that wasn't.

By Lewis Dartnell

18 June 2014

Margaret Howe had some success in teaching language to Peter the dolphin (Image: The John Lilly Estate)

The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins explores a 1960s project to teach a dolphin English, but its true significance has been buried in sexual innuendo

On the rocky coastline of St Thomas, a small island in the American Virgin Islands, squat the dilapidated ruins of a villa. Built in the 1960s by the eccentric neuroscientist John Lilly, this research station was once the site of one of the most ambitious experimental programmes in animal behaviour. Lilly hoped to teach dolphins to speak English.

Christopher Riley’s documentary The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins does a good job of explaining, in sober terms, why this idea isn’t as hopelessly crazy as it sounds. Researchers had been trying to teach chimpanzees sign language, and even spoken English, with limited success. Bottlenose dolphins are deeply social animals and seem to demonstrate a high level of intelligence in their behaviour. Indeed, we now suspect that in the wild, dolphins use signature whistles to identify each other; in other words, they have names .

When Lilly’s wife told him she had noticed lab dolphins imitating the tones of conversation between researchers, he reasoned that perhaps dolphins could be taught to not only understand human speech, but recreate words themselves through their blowholes.

Some of the funding for Lilly’s research came from NASA. Through the 1950s and 60s the agency, and radio astronomers in general, took increasingly seriously the possibility that there were other technological civilisations in our galaxy. If Lilly could establish communication with another animal species on Earth, lessons from his work might help humanity understand radio messages from extraterrestrial intelligent life.

With the arrival in St Thomas of a young and enthusiastic college dropout, Margaret Howe, the entire second floor of the villa was waterproofed and flooded so that human and dolphin could work together closely. Howe lived full time with a dolphin named Peter, and attempted to teach him English: hence the girl who talked to dolphins.

Howe had some early success, and was able to train Peter to make a recognisable attempt at approximating the sound and intonation of English words, repeating them back to her for fish treats. But for the funders, anxious to see progress from this expensive programme, few signs emerged that the dolphin actually comprehended what words signified or represented. Peter never constructed novel sequences of sounds to communicate his own intentionality.

Things didn’t improve. Lilly began taking LSD as a way of exploring his own mind, and even injected the hallucinogen into female captive dolphins to see how they responded. (They didn’t.) But the revelation that cast the greatest shadow over the credibility of the work was the nature of the relationship that developed between Howe and her experimental subject – a story revealed years later in Hustler magazine.

During the study period, as Peter matured, his sexual urges increasingly became a distraction. At first, the researchers arranged temporary visits to the enclosure with the two females, but as these visits became more frequent and disruptive to the language work, Howe began to relieve his desires manually herself.

By the summer of 1966, funding for the dolphin speech experiments had dried up. St Thomas dolphin house was shut down, and the three dolphins were relocated to a research lab in Florida. We are asked to imagine that Peter’s subsequent trials and miseries were the result of a broken heart. Howe stayed on and got married.

Underneath this tosh (and not to give too much away) there is a much tougher, more uncomfortable story not getting told at this point: about laboratory life, animal welfare and whether non-human animals should be accorded rights. The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins is not a love story, much as it might want to be one.

Riley’s documentary is undeniably fascinating, however. It is compellingly assembled from archive footage and, in places, cleverly and subtly reconstructed. Humans are not perfectly objective, investigative robots: you choose to study an area you are passionate about, you tend to favour one theory over another, and you care what the outcome is. Particularly in animal research, it can be difficult to avoid becoming attached to your subjects. The skill in successful science is to make sure these impulses don’t taint your methods and the results you get from them.

Lilly spent his last years arguing, with some success, for the release of captive dolphins. In the end, he felt he had had no right to experiment upon them.

Howe, now Howe Lovatt, feels differently. Her language experiments with Peter lasted only a few months before the plug was pulled. She wonders what we may yet discover about intelligence and language, if only we would learn a little patience.

The Girl Who talked to Dolphins was broadcast in the UK on BBC Four on 17 June 2014

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An Experiment To Teach Dolphins English, Ended In Interspecies Sex

In the 1960s, NASA was funding a research trying to teach dolphins English. But, after a few years, the project had to be cancelled in what was later described by the media as “the worst experiment in the world”.

Here’s the story of the insanely weird research that went tragically wrong.

In late 1960s, NASA decided to fund a dolphin communication project. The aim was to test whether or not dolphins could learn English. In the experiment, there were three dolphins: Peter, Pamela and Sissy. The youngest one, Peter, was selected by instructor,  Margaret Lovatt to be her live-in experiment. (the article continues after the ad)

The two started spending a lot of time together and, in just a few months, Peter actually learned a few words. But there was a problem. Peter fell in love with his teacher and started having “sexual urges”.  As Lovatt later explained, Peter… liked to be with her:

“He would rub himself on my knee, or my foot, or my hand. And at first I would put him downstairs with the girls,” she says.

But because moving Peter downstairs was proven to be very disruptive to the lessons, Lovatt decided to change her method: she would just relieve Peter’s urges herself manually!

“I allowed that,” she says. “I wasn’t uncomfortable with it, as long as it wasn’t rough. It would just become part of what was going on, like an itch – just get rid of it, scratch it and move on. And that’s how it seemed to work out. It wasn’t private. People could observe it.”

“It wasn’t sexual on my part. Sensuous perhaps. It seemed to me that it made the bond closer. Not because of the sexual activity, but because of the lack of having to keep breaking. And that’s really all it was. I was there to get to know Peter. That was part of Peter.”

But the news were quickly spread. In the early 1970s, Hustle magazine issued a story about Lovatt’s sexual encounters with Peter in a scandal that overshadowed the whole experiment:

Photo: Lilly Estate

In the months to come, another incident came to interrupt the study: the researchers started exploring the mind-altering powers of the drug LSD on dolphins. Lovatt refused to participate in this kind of research and the project was eventually cancelled.

Not being able to cope with the separation, Peter fell into depression and died.

If you like what you read, then you will definitely love this one:  These Dolphins Are Armed, Dangerous And Missing

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How A Science Experiment Led to Sexual Encounters Between a Woman and a Dolphin

A new documentary tells the story of Margaret Howe Lovatt, who in the 1960s took part in a NASA-funded research project, in which she developed an unusual relationship with a dolphin named Peter.

On June 17th, the BBC will debut a new documentary,  The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins . It's the story of Margaret Howe Lovatt, who in the 1960s took part in a NASA-funded research project, in which she developed an unusual relationship with a dolphin named Peter. A relationship that at times became sexual.

The emotional attachment between humans and animals is well documented. Like any animal and human who spend long amounts of time together, a dolphin trainer could say they "love" their dolphin, but this does not excuse nor open the door for zoophilia or delphinophilia. While I am a dolphin enthusiast, I am also a firm believer that humans and dolphins should not have sex.

Investigating the case of Margaret Howe Lovatt and Peter the dolphin, it was a relationship that started out of a logistical problem. In 1964, Lovatt was working on an experiment to try to teach Peter how to communicate with humans. ( A dolphin to human translator is still in the works today. ) She literally moved in with him for three months , sleeping next to the tank, and working on a desk that hung over the water where he swam.  They spent a great deal of time together, and as Peter was a sexually maturing adolescent dolphin, he often had sexual urges at inconvenient times. 

As it turns out, it's very difficult to teach a dolphin to talk when he is aroused. Lovatt found that Peter " would rub himself on my knee, my foot or my hand." She allowed it, "I wasn't uncomfortable — as long as it wasn't too rough. It was just easier to incorporate that and let it happen, it was very precious and very gentle, Peter was right there, he knew that I was right there."

In order to satisfy Peter's increasing sexual urges, he would be transported to another pool with two female dolphins. This was a logistical nightmare and it disrupted his communication lessons constantly. Eventually, Lovatt took it upon herself to relieve Peter of his urges, rather than going through the long and inconvenient process of transporting him, " It would just become part of what was going on, like an itch, just get rid of that scratch and we would be done and move on."

Sexual acts between dolphins and humans have a history. Malcolm Brenner wrote the book  Wet Goddess  about his nine-month long relationship with a dolphin. At the Nottingham Trent University, Dr. Mark Griffiths has studied delphinophiles (humans sexually attracted to dolphins.) There are also a number of blogs and online communities  dedicated to the study and appreciation of dolphin sex. (Note: this link is graphic and contains details of zoophilia, click at your discretion.)

The relationship between Lovatt and Peter was certainly unnatural, but not unheard of. Still, I strongly urge you to stay away from dolphins in a sexual capacity,  even if you believe they turn into handsome men at night .

You can watch the full clip below and see more previews on the BBC's YouTube page .

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Margaret Howe Lovatt: The Woman Who Fell in Love with a Dolphin

Many of us know all too well what it’s like to love an animal. We’re often willing to go to great lengths to care for our pets. The close bonds that result can be as strong as any. But how far can they be taken? Enter Margaret Howe Lovatt.

Lovatt is best known for being involved in a controversial experiment in the 1960s. In this research project, she attempted to teach a dolphin named Peter to speak English. It is considered to be one of the most fascinating and controversial stories of its kind.

Lovatt’s attempt to teach the animal led to some insights into dolphin behavior and communication. But it also raised questions about the ethics of animal experimentation and the limits of such relationships.

As Lovatt developed a close bond with Peter, their relationship gradually progressed, even becoming sexual. Some reports suggest that she even fell in love with him.

Altogether, the story of Margaret Howe Lovatt and the Dolphinarium experiment is a captivating, thought-provoking tale. It is every bit as riveting and scandalous as it sounds.

The Dolphinarium Experiment

In the middle of the 1960s, fascinating research was underway. This was during the tumult of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, on the tiny Caribbean Island of St. Thomas.

Lovatt, a naturalist, was living on the island. She was volunteering at a laboratory doing research with dolphins. There, she met John C. Lilly, a neuroscientist. He happened to be working with NASA and the U.S. Navy and was building a “Dolphinarium.”

The Dolphinarium experiment was a controversial project that aimed to teach dolphins the human language, specifically English. It was an incredible, extraordinary idea, but the researchers involved believe it to be worth a try.

Margaret Howe Lovatt was assigned to live with and train the dolphins in the facility. She believed that living with the dolphins and making human-like sounds would help in mimicking human language.

Throughout her research, she spent most of her time with a male bottlenose dolphin named Peter. However, their relationship gradually progressed beyond just a typical animal-human friendship.

Margaret’s Teaching Methods and Her Relationship with Peter

Lovatt’s teaching methods were initially fairly straightforward. They were only slightly out of the ordinary.

She lived by the dolphins and spoke to them often. The theory was that similar to a child copying their mother, they would be able to teach the dolphins something about how to speak English.

Lovatt grew closest to Peter. He was a young, but mature, male dolphin at the Dolphinarium. She spent almost two years with him.

Lovatt worked closely with the young dolphin. She documented Peter’s progress twice a day. She spoke slowly and alternated her tone to attempt to get Peter to recreate the words and sounds she wanted him to learn, like “Hello Margaret.”

According to Lovatt, the “m” sound was particularly challenging. But it seems progress was made in other areas.

However, Peter was a sexually maturing adolescent dolphin, and as such he often had sexual urges. This presented certain challenges. As Lovatt and Peter spent more time together in the isolated Dolphinarium, they continued to grow closer, with Lovatt even hinting that Peter liked to be close to her.

Before long, the male dolphin made advances. He rubbed himself on her and disrupted their lessons.

It wasn’t enough to just separate the two when these urges arose. It began to hinder the research completely. To “fix” this, Lovatt did what some might consider unthinkable. When Peter became aroused, Lovatt would “relieve” the dolphin herself in what many considered to be a legitimate sexual act.

Of course, Lovatt saw this as part of her work and even felt that this was something that deepened their close bond. But she refused to consider the behavior as sexual. In the end, many did not see things the same way.

Ethical Concerns and Controversy

Word got out about the nature of Lovatt’s relationship with Peter. The whole situation quickly became a source of controversy and there were allegations of animal abuse.

It was also rumored that Lovatt had injected him with LSD. This added to the uproar. This was largely a conflation with other, separate research.

Still, the relationship between Margaret Howe Lovatt and Peter the dolphin is often cited as an example of the ethical issues surrounding animal experimentation. While Lovatt intended to teach Peter to speak, their relationship gradually became more intimate. The lines between research and personal attachment became blurred.

The allegations raised important questions – and fiery debates – about the ethical boundaries of human-animal relationships. Were Lovatt’s actions abuse? They were surely disturbing and unthinkable to many. But did the specifics of their relationship amount to any real wrongdoing?

For her part, Lovatt denied any wrongdoing and maintained that her relationship with Peter was purely scientific. Though the controversy surrounding the experiment had lasting implications.

Despite the uproar, Lovatt maintained her relationship with Peter. Their relationship went from needing to be together for research, to a relationship of actually enjoying and missing each other when they were apart. Due to an eventual lack of funding for the Dolphinarium, their time together came to an end. The pair split up and Peter was sent to a new home in Miami.

Tragically, Peter the dolphin would commit suicide not long after. Some believe it was the heartbreak of being separated from Lovat. Whereas others cite the small tank and inhumane conditions of his new home.

Media Coverage and Scientific Impact

The ordeal drew widespread media attention. It continues to be a topic of interest and debate today. After an article on Lovatt’s sexual relationship with Peter appeared in the popular magazine, Hustler , the research was largely frowned upon publicly.

Scientifically, little was achieved in the way of teaching dolphins to speak English. However, it does seem that these efforts are still ongoing today in other research labs.

The scientific community largely responded negatively. They raised concerns about behavioral ethics and the potential impact on the well-being of Peter. The controversy surrounding the experiment and Lovatt’s relationship with Peter overshadowed much of the science being done.

Today, Lovatt’s story serves as a cautionary tale about the boundaries of our relationships with animals and the importance of ethical considerations in all manners of scientific research.

Mosendz, Polly. “How a Science Experiment Led to Sexual Encounters between a Woman and a Dolphin.” The Atlantic, June 11, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/how-a-science-experiment-led-to-sexual-encounters-for-a-woman-and-a-dolphin/372606/ .

Riley, Christopher. “The Dolphin Who Loved Me: The NASA-Funded Project That Went Wrong.” The Guardian, June 8, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-dolphin-who-loved-me .

Winfrey, Tiffany. “Woman Admits Having Sexual Experience with Dolphin as Part of NASA Study in the 1960s.” The Science Times, November 7, 2022. https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/40844/20221107/woman-admits-having-sexual-experience-with-dolphin-as-part-of-nasa-study-in-the-1960s.htm.

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10 Facts About NASA’s Failed Dolphin Communication Project

The Dolphin Communication Project, conducted by neuroscientist Dr. John Lilly and partly funded by NASA, was full of controversy and unusual situations. Hoping to bridge the gap in interspecies communication, Lilly wrote the book Man and Dolphin . It outlined observations that dolphins were capable of mimicking noises made by humans and the fascinating way that this finding could potentially impact life as we know it.

We may find it hard to imagine a world where dolphins and possibly other intelligent cetaceans could give us insight into the history of our planet or input on world affairs. But this is exactly the kind of thing that Dr. Lilly had in mind. While things clearly did not go according to plan, the project paved the path to a new understanding of the intelligence of these marine animals. Unfortunately, this is a story with a sad ending.

It is well-known that dolphins are an intelligent species and have social structures with impressing complexity. Each animal has its own personality. They form alliances, share duties, and can recognize themselves, showing a sense of self-awareness. With brains capable of grasping concepts like “none,” dolphins can understand more than we might initially think. Some at the Dolphin Institute in Hawaii have been taught hundreds of words using a variety of different techniques including gestures and symbols.

From strange occurrences involving a woman’s three-month cohabitation with a dolphin to the inspiring realization that dolphin communication could help us to speak to aliens, here are 10 facts about NASA’s failed Dolphin Communication Project.

10 The Project Was Intended To Teach Dolphins English

Mary, the first wife of Dr. John Lilly, noticed in 1957 that the bottlenose dolphins they were studying in Florida would roughly imitate human speech by making sounds through their blowholes. This sparked an idea in Dr. Lilly and inspired him to write the book titled Man and Dolphin .

Turning his attention to the concept of how dolphins communicate with each other, he began to envision the possibility of communication between species and would attempt to teach the dolphins he had in captivity to speak English. However, talking dolphins were not the only extreme possibilities that Dr. Lilly saw for the future of our world. [1]

9 John Lilly Wanted Marine Animals To Have A Seat In The United Nations

The book Man and Dolphin explained Mary Lilly’s observations of dolphins making humanlike sounds through their blowholes. It also outlined the potential to teach dolphins to speak the English language, which would lead to the ultimate goal of creating a Cetacean Chair at the United Nations. [2]

John Lilly believed that this would give marine mammals a voice in world affairs and open our eyes on topics such as science and history. We can only imagine a world where humans and dolphins work hand in fin to solve current global issues, although it does sound like it could make for an interesting story.

8 Communicating With Dolphins Got The Attention Of Astronomers

Due to the overwhelming popularity of Man and Dolphin , astronomers interested in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence began to realize the benefits of communications between dolphins and humans as a means to understand contact with other potentially intelligent life-forms from different planets .

Lilly’s ability to establish communication with another species on Earth gave astronomers hope that those accomplishments would lay a foundation for lessons on how to understand potential radio transmissions from extraterrestrials in the future.

After the increased attention to Lilly’s research in Miami, Florida, NASA got on board and provided some funding for his research. This allowed Lilly to open a second facility in the Caribbean named the Dolphin Point Laboratory. [3]

7 Bottlenose Dolphins Were Previously Seen As Vermin

The cetacean communication research changed the way we view dolphins and other marine life . North American fishers along the East Coast would refer to this intelligent species as vermin or herring hogs as they would regularly interfere with the business of the fishermen. [4]

If it were not for Dr. Lilly’s research into the correlation between brain size and intelligence , which led to the whole mysterious and failed experiment to teach dolphins to communicate with us, dolphins probably wouldn’t be considered the most intelligent marine animal today.

The realization about their intelligence caused them to be put on a protection list. Otherwise, the world would be a different place.

6 Margaret Howe Lovatt Lived In Complete Isolation With A Dolphin

During summer 1965, the upstairs lab and balcony of the Dolphin Point Laboratory in St. Thomas was redesigned and flooded with 46 centimeters (18 in) of salt water to accommodate Margaret Lovatt and Peter, the bottlenose dolphin chosen for the experiment.

A desk where Margaret could work and a foam mattress fitted with shower curtains were suspended from the ceiling. She kept a diary to record her findings. It stated that cleaning was interesting as most of the filth would pile at the bottom of the elevator shaft each morning, making it easy to suck up. Also, cooking was fine as she consumed mostly canned food to limit contact with the outside world.

Lovatt had three main goals during this 10-week experiment. First, she wanted to record notes on interspecies isolation . Second, she wanted to find ways of improving living conditions to make long-term confinement possible. Third, she wanted to teach Peter to speak.

John Lilly noted that bottlenose dolphins were larger and stronger than humans. Although these animals were chosen because their brain size is comparable to that of a human, they would get angry or annoyed when not managed properly. This made 10 weeks the maximum time that two species could survive in isolated cohabitation by Dr. Lilly’s observations. [5]

5 The Dolphin Learned To Speak

Margaret and Peter lived by a strict schedule. Every morning from Sunday through Friday started with English lessons . To nurture Peter’s skill of mimicking human speech through his blowhole, Margaret decided to paint her face white and use black lipstick to clearly indicate where the sounds were coming from. She encouraged Peter to copy these sounds, including greeting her in the mornings with “Hello, Margaret.”

Dolphins have brains that are highly developed, which involves areas that relate to higher thinking. This allows a dolphin to understand the complexities of language, including how syntax changes the meaning of a sentence. [6]

During the experiment, Peter learned to say many words such as “we,” “triangle,” and “one.” He would reply with “play, play, play” when Margaret would say “work, work, work.” As she had encouraged, Peter also learned to say “Hello, Margaret.” However, it was difficult for Peter to make an “m” sound. Eventually, he rolled over to allow the bubbles to make the sound for him.

4 The Dolphin Made Sexual Advances Toward Margaret

Peter came sexually of age during this experiment , and he would often have sexual urges at times that Margaret deemed to be inconvenient. Peter would rub himself against Margaret’s hands, legs, and feet. As long as it was not too rough, she did not mind.

Originally, Peter would undergo a long transportation to another pool with two female dolphins to satisfy his urges. However, this process disrupted the lessons so frequently that Margaret eventually decided that it would be more efficient to relieve Peter herself. [7]

3 John Lilly Gave LSD To The Dolphins

In the Caribbean , Dr. Lilly found that dolphins under the influence of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) were 70 percent more vocal. He conducted a variety of experiments in controlled settings which involved putting sober dolphins and dolphins injected with LSD together in a tank. Sometimes, the stoned dolphin was paired with a human, as with the peculiar case of Margaret Lovatt and Peter.

It was noted that the dolphins engaged in all sorts of nonverbal communication. However, the inclusion of LSD established that what was observed during the experiments had no meaning in the verbal sphere. [8]

Although LSD did not seem to make it easier for the dolphins to understand and learn the English language, every step in the process of communication was important. The development of nonverbal communication with the dolphins opened the doors to understanding how these animals interacted with each other and, ultimately, how we could interact with them. It was almost like dolphin sign language .

2 Funding Was Cut Due To John Lilly’s Lack Of Interest

Dr. John Lilly was one of a select group of neuroscientists who was licensed by the US government to research the effects of LSD for potential medical properties. During autumn 1966, Lilly’s interest in the Dolphin Communication Project had decreased and was replaced by a new fascination with LSD. [9]

This had severe consequences on the future of the project as Lilly portrayed a dismissive attitude toward the general welfare of the dolphins in his care. This arrogant disregard ultimately drove away Gregory Bateson, the director of the laboratory .

In turn, this led to a funding cut and the need to transport all the dolphins from the Caribbean to one of Lilly’s other labs, which was disguised as a bank building in Miami, Florida.

1 Peter The Dolphin Dies Of A Broken Heart

The end of this story is a sad one. After Peter was transferred to his new home in Miami, Florida, he fell into a depression . Some factors included being kept in a small tank with little sunlight. The sudden separation from Margaret Lovatt after a loving and possibly romantic connection had developed on Peter’s part also appeared to take a toll on his mental state. Eventually, Peter committed suicide .

It is understood that dolphins do not breathe air automatically like we do. Every breath a dolphin takes is a conscious decision and effort. In situations like Peter’s where life becomes unbearable, dolphins can decide to call it quits by taking one last breath and sinking to the bottom of the body of water. [10]

Read more amazing facts about dolphins on 10 Amazing Dolphin Superpowers and 10 Incredible Stories Of Whales, Dolphins And Porpoises .

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How A Science Experiment Led to Sexual Encounters Between a Woman and a Dolphin

On June 17th, the BBC will debut a new documentary,  The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins . It's the story of Margaret Howe Lovatt, who in the 1960s took part in a NASA-funded research project, in which she developed an unusual relationship with a dolphin named Peter. A relationship that at times became sexual.

The emotional attachment between humans and animals is well documented. Like any animal and human who spend long amounts of time together, a dolphin trainer could say they "love" their dolphin, but this does not excuse nor open the door for zoophilia or delphinophilia. While I am a dolphin enthusiast, I am also a firm believer that humans and dolphins should not have sex. 

Investigating the case of Margaret Howe Lovatt and Peter the dolphin, it was a relationship that started out of a logistical problem. In 1964, Lovatt was working on an experiment to try to teach Peter how to communicate with humans. ( A dolphin to human translator is still in the works today. ) She literally moved in with him for three months , sleeping next to the tank, and working on a desk that hung over the water where he swam.  They spent a great deal of time together, and as Peter was a sexually maturing adolescent dolphin, he often had sexual urges at inconvenient times. 

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As it turns out, it's very difficult to teach a dolphin to talk when he is aroused. Lovatt found that Peter " would rub himself on my knee, my foot or my hand." She allowed it, "I wasn't uncomfortable — as long as it wasn't too rough. It was just easier to incorporate that and let it happen, it was very precious and very gentle, Peter was right there, he knew that I was right there."

In order to satisfy Peter's increasing sexual urges, he would be transported to another pool with two female dolphins. This was a logistical nightmare and it disrupted his communication lessons constantly. Eventually, Lovatt took it upon herself to relieve Peter of his urges, rather than going through the long and inconvenient process of transporting him, " It would just become part of what was going on, like an itch, just get rid of that scratch and we would be done and move on."

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Sexual acts between dolphins and humans have a history. Malcolm Brenner wrote the book  Wet Goddess  about his nine-month long relationship with a dolphin. At the Nottingham Trent University, Dr. Mark Griffiths has studied delphinophiles (humans sexually attracted to dolphins.) There are also a number of blogs and online communities  dedicated to the study and appreciation of dolphin sex. (Note: this link is graphic and contains details of zoophilia, click at your discretion.)

The relationship between Lovatt and Peter was certainly unnatural, but not unheard of. Still, I strongly urge you to stay away from dolphins in a sexual capacity,  even if you believe they turn into handsome men at night .

You can watch the full clip below and see more previews on the BBC's YouTube page .

This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/06/how-a-science-experiment-led-to-sexual-encounters-for-a-woman-and-a-dolphin/372606/

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NASA's Failed Experiment: The Dolphin Communication Project, an Attempt at Interspecies Dialogue

The controversial and odd Dolphin Communication Project, led by neuroscientist Dr. John Lilly and partly funded by NASA, aimed to help animals of different species talk to each other.

Even though the project didn't reach its lofty goals, it did reveal important new facts about how imaginative sea animals are.

A Bold Vision for Interspecies Communication

Dr. John Lilly wrote  Man and Dolphin  after seeing bottlenose dolphins imitating human speech in the late 1950s. In it, he describes his plan to teach dolphins English so that they might participate in world events.

His biggest dream was to set up a Cetacean Chair at the UN so that marine animals could have a say in the world's problems. Astronomers who were looking for extraterrestrial intelligence were interested in Lilly's work. This got NASA's attention and led to them funding his study.

The Dolphin Point Laboratory was built in the Caribbean because of the project's original success in Miami, Florida. Here, Lilly and his team continued conducting tests, hoping to find a way for dolphins and humans to talk to each other.

However, the big project encountered many problems, such as dolphin communication and human speech having very different light scattering intensities. This made it hard to get a good signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) image of the dolphins' sounds.

Methods That Cause Controversy and Unexpected Results

One of the most controversial parts of the Dolphin Communication Project was the three-month experiment in which Margaret Howe Lovatt and Peter, a bottlenose dolphin, lived together. After the lab was changed so that Peter could learn English, Lovatt, and Peter could use it.

For example, Lovatt painted her face white and wore black lipstick to help Peter talk like a natural person. Like "hello" and "play," the dolphin learned to say a few words.

But the experiment took a strange turn when Peter  started making sexual moves toward Lovatt . To keep the experiment going, Lovatt chose to give in to Peter's urges herself, which was a choice that later came under a lot of criticism.

Some people didn't like the studies because Dr. Lilly was interested in lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). He discovered that dolphins who were high on LSD were more talkative, which led to many studies with dolphins that were both sober and high.

Even with all of these efforts, the dolphins' use of LSD did not significantly improve their ability to learn English. However, it did help scientists understand how they communicate without words. Lilly lost interest in the Dolphin Communication Project, as did the money it gave.

As he focused more on the LSD study, the project's management and care for the dolphins got worse. Because of this lack of care, the Dolphin Point Laboratory had to close, and the dolphins had to move to a facility in Miami.

READ ALSO: Bottlenose Dolphins Adjust to Pollution, Enduring Intrusive Coastal Constructions

A Sad Ending and a Lasting Legacy

At the end of the project, tragedy struck when Peter the dolphin, who had been separated from Lovatt and locked up in a small, dark tank,  went into a deep depression . Dolphins have to choose to breathe, and Peter stopped breathing because he was sad, which is the same thing as committing suicide.

It was sad that this ending showed how deep dolphins' emotions and minds go, revealing how smart and sensitive they are. Even though it used controversial methods and failed in the end, the Dolphin Communication Project helped us learn more about dolphins' intelligence.

It changed how people thought about sea animals, helping to protect them and recognize them as intelligent beings. The project also led to conversations about properly using animals in science research, which will affect future research and rules.

Dr. John Lilly's dream of communicating between species may not have come true in the end, but his work has left a lasting mark on the scientific community. It has made it possible to learn more about the minds and feelings of dolphins and other intelligent species.

RELATED ARTICLE: Woman Admits Having Sexual Experience With Dolphin as Part of NASA Study in the 1960s

Check out more news and information on Dolphins  in Science Times.

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Checking the Claim: A Device That Translates Dolphin Sounds Into English

Researchers used new technology to interpret a dolphin noise they say translates loosely to “seaweed”

Tuan C. Nguyen

It isn't too much of a stretch to think that dolphins, given their playful nature and charm, converse with each other much like we do. But is this really the case? And if so, to what extent do their seemingly random calls indicate a natural penchant for language?

Dolphin researcher Denise Herzing has spent nearly three decades listening in on such   noises in hopes of deciphering what she suspects is actual dolphin chatter. But it wasn't until she tried to  teach  the dolphins calls for specific English words—and they responded—that she realized she may have hit on something big.

Since 1985, Herzing, with the  Wild Dolphin Project , has used underwater video and sound equipment to study the natural communication system of an especially friendly pod of dolphins that lives along a stretch of the Bahamas near the southern tip of Florida, amassing a database that profiles their relationships, sounds and behavior, and how these things have changed over time.   

The latest goal in that research has been to try to use the dolphins' own signals to communicate with the animals. Last August, the team had a breakthrough. Researchers, during a test run of a wearable translation device, captured a unique whistle that they had taught the dolphins, and the device instantly translated it into English.

The word? "Sargassum," a type of seaweed often used as a toy during divers' interactions with the dolphins. 

"We know that dolphins in captivity are fast [and] spontaneous and [also] excellent acoustic mimics, and that they can associate sounds with objects," Herzing says. "Whether they do this in their 'natural' communication system we don't know. But we knew that they   have the cognitive flexibility as a species, so we thought we would create a tool to see what they would do with it." 

There's no shortage of research on the way that dolphins interact. The animal labels and identifies others in its group with whistles. And in the 1970s, researchers found that  Akeakamai , an especially bright bottlenose dolphin housed at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu, could be taught, through a kind of sign language, to understand syntactic differences, or the manner in which re-shuffled arrangements of hand gestures can be used to convey a particular message.

But establishing two-way acoustic communication using a   language's key building blocks—that is, specific sounds that can be recognized, understood and expressed mutually—was something that had long been beyond the scope of dolphin reseachers.

Herzing wanted to at least try to break that barrier. She started in the late 1990s teaching the dolphins how to recognize and request objects, along with the name of three researchers, by pairing them with artificial sounds and symbols on a keyboard. Ultimately, the approach didn't quite yield the kind of results she had hoped for. 

But since last year, divers have been experimenting with Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry (CHAT), a chest-worn device about the size of a toaster oven. Developed in collaboration with artificial intelligence researcher and Google Glass project lead Thad Starner, the system was   programmed   to produce distinct whistles that corresponded to objects such as a scarf, a rope or sargassam, all of which researchers employed in their regular play time with the animals. Using a sophisticated algorithmic formula that takes into account variables like background noise and the direction and angle from which the sounds are produced, CHAT can also catch when the animals make these sounds (up to 100 feet away) and instantly play them back in English .

After each dive, the collected sound files are pulled off the device through WiFi and then reviewed for sound types and matches, Herzing says. The system also logs all the box activity, "including when sounds were played, when sound were received and what they matched," she says.   

August was the first time the whistle for "seaweed" was caught and translated by Herzing and her team. She hopes the technology, while promising, can also be used to determine   if dolphins' sounds are expressed as singular unit s  of information or whether they may carry a more nuanced meaning.

"If you say FUN and SUN, the  ' f '  and  ' s '  are unique units of sound that can be used with UN," Herzing  told   Wired UK . "The combinatorial power of these units is part of what makes human language powerful. We simply have not been able to look at these kinds of details of dolphins sounds in the past ,  but computer programs are now making this possible."

Justin Gregg, a researcher at the Dolphin Communication Project and author of   Are Dolphins Really Smart? The Mammal Behind the Myth,  doubts that dolphin-induced sounds are being used to communicate anything beyond names of objects   and the dolphins' own emotional states. 

In a  Wall Street Journal  editorial , he attributes what he calls   the unsubstantiated notion that dolphins use language to the wild theories put forth by famed neuroscientist John Lilly, who contended that by cracking the "code of dolphinese," humans would be able to decode the languages of extraterrestrials.

"I think the past 50 years have shown us that it is unlikely their communication system functions like human language with words and grammar,” he  told the site   Txchnologist . “But a lot of people hold out hope that they do have a language.”

Herzing, however, argues that the difficulty in unraveling the meaning behind a dolphin's squeal has less to do with such assumptions being inherently flawed and more to do with the immense challenges that come with conducting studies in an aquatic environment.

“In my book, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" she says. "I imagine that we will find that dolphins, and probably many other species, do many things we couldn't imagine before we started looking. So, instead of trying to undermine these studies, let's put some creative tools forward. I mean dolphins really are smart! Let's find out how smart.”

In the meantime, Herzing, who has been described as the cetacean equivalent of famous chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall, plans to tweak the device so that   researchers can   catch more whistles, particularly those   at higher frequencies. Last year, she says, it appeared "the dolphins were attempting to mimic some whistles, but they placed them in frequencies that were higher than we anticipated."

She's also taking on a second project with the Georgia Institute of Technology using pattern recognition. "We might begin to incorporate some of their other sounds, besides signature whistles, into the CHAT system," she says. But that development is months, or years, away.

"We simply need more time in the field with the dolphins to expose them to the system and see what they do," she says. "It's about getting more on their bandwidth." 

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Tuan C. Nguyen | READ MORE

Tuan C. Nguyen is a Silicon Valley-based journalist specializing in technology, health, design and innovation. His work has appeared in ABCNews.com, NBCNews.com, FoxNews.com, CBS' SmartPlanet and LiveScience.

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Scientists once gave dolphins LSD in attempt to communicate with them

In the 1960s a nasa-funded research unit investigated methods of talking to the sea creatures, article bookmarked.

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Scientists once gave dolphins the hallucinogenic drug LSD, in an attempt to communicate with them.

Funded by NASA, the Communication Research Institute, informally known as The Dolphin House, investigated methods of talking to the creatures in the 1960s. They also used a range of techniques in an attempt to teach the animals English.

John Lilly, a neuroscientist who led the work, studied three dolphins in particular, one of which he chose to leave in an isolation tank with a human 24 hours a day for three months.

During the isolation period the dolphin , name d Peter, began making sexual advances towards researcher, Margaret Howe Lovatt , who chose to relieve the animal's urges because it was proving to be disruptive to the training.

Ultimately, none of the dolphins were able to learn English.

But researchers found that they were 70 per cent more vocal after they were administered with LSD.

Dr Lilly wrote that “the important thing for us with the LSD in the dolphin is that what we see has no meaning in the verbal sphere."

He added: "We are out of what you might call the rational exchange of complex ideas because we haven't developed communication in that particular way as yet.”

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When the funding for the experiment ran out in 1966, the dolphin that took part in the isolation experiment was moved to a facility in Miami where it effectively committed suicide.

Some argued this was because it could no longer cope without being in close contact with Ms Lovatt.

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In the 1960s NASA-funded scientists tried to teach dolphins to speak English

• June 17, 2017
• Fun Facts about Animals , Fun Facts about Science , Random Facts

The project aimed to teach dolphins to speak and involved flooding a house and living with the dolphins. One researcher even developed an intimate relationship with one of them.

Can dolphins speak English?

The dolphins were claimed to have learnt words such as “ball” and “diamond” but struggled with the letter “m”.

In the 1960s, NASA and the US Navy funded an ambitious science program to learn to communicate with dolphins and teach them English. With the space race in full flow, NASA was interested in how we might communicate with an alien race and realised that they could begin with trying to communicate with intelligent species that already live on Earth.

The ‘Dolphinarium’ was built on the island of St Thomas; a flooded house which would serve as a science lab in which the dolphins would live. The dolphins used for the experiment were the ones that played Flipper in the Hollywood film; Sissy, Pamela and the young Peter would live alongside human scientists who would try to teach them to speak English. The theory was that, much like a baby human, if the dolphin was in constant contact with humans then it would pick up the language.

Leading the project was neuroscientist Dr John C. Lilly. In 1961 Lilly wrote Man and Dolphin; a book theorising possible future communication with dolphins and even that they might one day have a seat at the United Nations, representing marine animals.

But it was his assistant, Margaret Howe Lovatt, who took the project one step further. She was not a scientist but was enthusiastic and a ‘good observer’. It was her idea to flood the lab entirely and live permanently with the youngest dolphin Peter, who showed the most promising signs.

Dolphin sex and LSD

The research had some hiccups though. Lovatt tried to teach the dolphin to say ‘Hello Margaret’ but the letter ‘m’ is very difficult for a dolphin to recreate without blowing bubbles. Also, the adolescent Peter became sexually attracted to the young female researcher. In the interests of furthering the project she decided that it would help if she relieved him. When details emerged in Hustler magazine which ran an article about interspecies sex, the project got some bad press.

Dr Lilly was also experimenting with LSD and became a ‘full blown hippie’. He started exploring the effects of LSD on dolphins with no clear results. Eventually the project lost funding and they had to move to a smaller building with no windows and Peter ‘committed suicide’. (Dolphins don’t breathe automatically like humans and each breath is a conscious effort. If they are too depressed they will simply sink to the bottom and never come back up.)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-dolphin-who-loved-me

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10860676/The-woman-who-lived-in-sin-with-a-dolphin.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Howe_Lovatt

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