Not Dolphins!
Since we were kids, we've been told dolphins are kind and humanlike, possibly even more intelligent than humans. They've been the darlings of the environmentalist crowd for over twenty years. And now we find out they're not so nice and, to the extent they are humanlike, it's in rather unpleasant ways. A list of their offenses:
* Bullying. "Gangs of strong males pick on younger or smaller dolphins," National Geographic television reported in 1999.
* Domestic violence. "Dr. Richard Connor, studying dolphins in Shark Bay in Western Australia, has documented cases of males kidnapping and holding females captive, sometimes for months at a time," according to National Geographic.
* Interspecies hate crimes. "Harbour porpoises are being killed in increasing numbers by bottlenose dolphins around British coasts," the BBC reported in January. The New York Times reported in 1999 that "dolphins have been found to bludgeon porpoises to death by the hundreds."
* Infanticide. "Dolphin researchers from the United States and Britain recently reported that baby bottlenose dolphins found dead on the shores of both countries were likely battered to death by adult bottlenose dolphins," reported Ocean Watch in 1998. The Times reported in 1999 that "off Scotland, a scientist watched in shock for nearly an hour as an adult dolphin repeatedly picked up a baby in its mouth and smacked it against the water, over and over, until it sank from view."
* Sexual Assault. "A Norwegian man is accusing a dolphin of attempted rape," Reuters reported from Oslo in 1999. "Norway's top-selling daily Verdens Gang on Tuesday quoted the 28-year-old as saying that the dolphin apparently mistook him for a female after swimming alongside him in the sea off Farsund, south Norway, earlier this month. The dolphin's penis got caught between the man's swimming costume and his legs. . . . 'The dolphin shoved me forward two or three metres [six to 10 feet] before I got loose,' he said. 'At first I thought it was a fin . . . but dolphins don't have fins on their underbellies.' "
From James Taranto at WSJ
