“Is anybody out there?” Photo: Unsplash
A certain dolphin has been pestering beachgoers on Japan’s shores, and some authorities think it might actually be lonely for a lover. It’s far from the first time – au contraire, in fact, dolphins and humans go way, way back in the sack, depending on whom you ask – but this particular porpoise has an exceptionally sordid record, according to the BBC.
The “lonely and potentially sexually frustrated dolphin” is reportedly causing a scene near the town of Mihama on Japan’s west coast, where at least 18 “attacks” have been blamed on the renegade mammal this year alone, including one on a young child whose finger required some 20 stitches.
There were six such attacks last year, including one resulting in some broken ribs.
Officials have released warnings stating that dolphins can “bite you with their sharp teeth and cause you to bleed,” and “drag you into the sea, which could be life-threatening.”
Fair dinkum.
But, Mie University cetology professor Tadamichi Morisaka tells the BBC, the dolphin is “not trying to injure people,” instead “play-biting,” using dolphin language to communicate his predicament.
Why not go for fellow dolphins, you might ask? Bottlenose are innately social creatures, much like us humans. Also like us, certain social mores are expected of them, and transgressions can lead to ostracization from communities, and he might have been cast off to fend for himself and seek pleasure elsewhere.
And this here specimen would not be the first randy rogue of his genus, Tursiops, to turn to humans for affection. Dolphin-human relations go back a millennia, with records dating at least as far back as 1500 BC in Greece. And more recently and famously, there is of course the NASA-funded LSD-laced human-dolphin domesticity experiment in the 1960s, in which one Margaret Howe Lovatt, a “naturalist” and the female human subject of the study, indulged the sexual advances of one Peter the dolphin (who’d just come off the set of Flipper). In the wild, there was then the sordid summer fling between a Florida man (who else) and a dolphin, detailed in the 2015 documentary, Dolphin Lover. We could go on, but we’ll respectfully stop here.
Another take, from National University of Singapore marine-mammal expert Dr. Matthias Hoffmann-Kuhnt, is that the dolphin might be reacting in defense, having been somehow violated himself by humans. Reports of people trying to ride dolphins, or place fingers in blowholes are many.
Whatever the beast’s intentions may be, a quarter-ton toothy mammal is nothing to take lightly.
This dolphin is currently carousing around Japan’s west-facing coast, which means that save for the occasional short-period disturbance, he likely won’t encounter one of us, and our precious fiberglass and foam sticks are probably safe from his harm’s way, at least. Never turn your back on the sea, goes the repetend familiar to sea-goers the world round, but that goes double for our blubbery friends.
