Andrew is a post-doctoral researcher in North Carolina focused on population and conservation genetics in hydrothermal vent communities.
One of the discussions that occurred while socializing at ScienceOnline’09 regarded my personal feelings towards dolphins. Not surprisingly, whenever non-marine people find out I’m a marine biologist, the conversation always turns to dolphins, after which the person is surprised (shocked, appalled) by my lack on fondness for the sea beasties. The excessive hearting of charismatic megafauna is a pet peeve of mine, with a particular focus on the ocean’s most fawned over denizens.
This article got me thinking about why I hold such apparent animosity towards marine mammals.
Now, let me be perfectly clear. I don’t hate marine mammals. I don’t get particularly excited over marine mammals, but then again, most people don’t get particularly excited over chytrids so it doesn’t bother me that different people love different things. What does bother me is the cult of dolphin worship that has sprung up around them. Ask most people if the bottlenose dolphin is endangered, and they’ll probably say yes. It isn’t. In fact, at this point it would probably make more sense to be eating tuna safe dolphin. And, while many marine mammals are threatened, endangered, and critically endangered, there is a widely held belief that marine mammals deserve more protection that other organisms.
But all of that is neither here nor there. The fact is, we protect what we love, and if dolphin worship is bringing people closer to the ocean, that’s great. But if we’re drawing people closer to the ocean, should we not be educating them about it as well? That’s why I always get whipped into a frenzy when people start asking me about marine mammals. It’s fine to start with marine mammals, it really is, but more often than not, the conversation never goes beyond them. It’s as if they were the only creatures in the sea.
So this article gets me worked up. Because the cult of the dolphin is so strong that people refuse to accept that sometimes nature isn’t really that pleasant. That it isn’t all like a Disney Movie. That we don’t always know what’s best and we can’t always intervene. Yes, some dolphins might die in a New Jersey river, but they aren’t dying from boat strikes or gillnets or pollution. They’ve wandered into a sub-optimal environment and are being selected against.
The quotes from the dolphin worshipers are revealing. “They’re like children… They’re frightened.” Dolphins are not like children. Dolphins are nothing like children and they’re not human beings and we have no idea what they’re thinking or feeling. These are sleek, deadly, organic machines engineered by millions of years of natural selection to dominate their environment. Instead of making emotional appeals, we need take the time to understand our world.
It is necessary to love the things we need to protect. But I think it is naïve and patronizing to think that people will only love something if we reduce it to a cartoonish caricature of itself. Emotional appeals take advantage of ignorance to force a point. It’s the reason why Americans get disgusted when other cultures eat dog or horse or guinea pig, while we see no problem eating beef. They preclude thoughtful introspection and investigation.
This is not a rant against people who study marine mammals, people who work with marine mammals, or even people who just plain love marine mammals. This is a rant against the end result of dogmatic dolphin worship. People like Joan Ocean* who takes thousands of dollars from innocent dolphin lovers to give them deep, spiritual, telepathic experiences with spinner dolphins in Hawaii, while basically harassing the dolphins and disrupting their natural behavior. A professor of mine and great marine mammal biologist once described these trips as “having 30 strangers surround you while you’re sleeping and whisper ‘I love you, you’re beautiful’ all night.”
This is about people who demand we save dolphins from that New Jersey river while NOAA is trying to tell them “that actually trying to move them can cause fatalities rather than improving their prospects for survival.”
This is really about resisting dogma, forcing people to confront information that challenges their beliefs, to question ideas and explore the possibility that we are wrong. And that while stopping at the water’s edge may provide a nice comfortable view, the deeper you dive, the more glorious the ocean becomes.
So when people ask me at a bar how I feel about dolphins, I try to bring them a little further into my world.
~Southern Fried Scientist
*for more on the wonder that is Joan Ocean, check out her experience forging a telepathic connection with a tribe of bigfoots.
Quote: “Dolphins are all smiley and frolick-y and shit on TV, where they solve problems, rescue kittens and do flips. In the wild, they’re as big as Volkswagens and twice as fast. Not to mention totally evil and smart enough to really fuck with you.”
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[...] Fried Scientist tells it like it is. He just posted a very well-written article on “the cult of dolphin worship“. “… the cult of the dolphin is so strong that people refuse to accept that [...]
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This came up at the Science Fiction & Science panel, when someone asked me why I don’t use scifi in my science outreach. Two words: PSYCHIC DOLPHINS. Oh, god, there’s so many %^#&@*@# psychic dolphins in scifi. I was thinking of writing a scifi short story featuring real dolphin behavior, what with the forced copulation and the turtle drowning and the fighting.
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Malcolm,
Thanks for reading and commenting. Ours is a fundamental disagreement that I doubt can find resolution. To wit, I’ve also had personal experience with dolphins, as well as whales, porpoises, manatees, and one unfortunate incident with a bull sea lion in the Galapagos. The totality of those experiences have led me to believe that not only are dolphins not like us, but that it isn’t possible to know what a creature that experiences the world in such a profoundly different way thinks or feels. Yes, I have some inkling what my dog wants when it scratches at the door, but then I let him into the house, he runs around the kitchen island then immediately back out the front door again, so what was he thinking?
But, this is all part of my point. You and I are two members of the same species and yet, for the life I me, I find myself incapable of comprehending how you think the way you do. How could I possibly assume I know what a member of a different species is thinking?
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Andrew, dude, you’re debating acumen rocks!
And I totally agree with everything you said.
Conservationists are to Dolphin-worshippers as the ASPCA is to PETA.
And where exactly can I get some of that tuna-safe dolphin? It sounds delicious.
In the unlikely event you haven’t seen it, look here.
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Malcolm,
John Lilly was a quack. The man believed that taking LSD improved man’s ability to talk to animals. I’ve never tried the stuff but friends tell me it also improves man’s ability to talk to furniture- or at least to fervently believe that furniture is talking to you. I’m never a fan of rudeness, but I think the scientific community was right to not take Lilly terrible seriously.
If the night janitor is taking all the credit for training the dolphin, how is it that you know that “the dolphin trained him”? Did the dolphin tell you while you were on LSD? To quote Pirates of the Caribbean, “No survivors? Where do all the stories come from, I wonder?”
Also, chytrids aren’t frogs. They’re fungi.
Look, I’m an animal lover too (though I use that term in a different way than you do, apparently), and it’s tempting to think that you can understand them. No one’s saying that dolphins are stupid, but the notion that we can understand anything they are “saying”- and vice versa- has been thoroughly repudiated by all respectable scientists for half a century.
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Lilly a quack? The scientific community didn’t take him seriously? Where do you get your information? His admirers in the scientific community included NASA officials and Nobel Prize Laureates. He invented the Peak Flow Meter and was the world’s foremost authority on dolphins and their brains. His contributions to science and medicine are too long to list here. So he took LSD. Who didn’t back then?
At least he was being paid by the National Institute of Health to do so. Crazy like a fox is a more apt adjective!
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John Lilly believed that taking LSD made it possible to communicate with animals. I really don’t think I need to say anything more than that to demonstrate that he was a little cuckoo.
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Most people didn’t take LSD.
Regardless of his eccentricities, one of Lilly’s “experiments” was to trap a dolphin in a 24 inch deep tank for weeks with a trainer and try to force it to speak English. Not only is that not a rigorous nor scientifically valid test (what was he measuring, what were the results, who was overseeing the methodology) it was also unbelievably cruel to the animal.
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[...] The Southern Fried Scientist has a sense of porpoise. [...]
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Andrew,
I knew chytrids are a fungus that ATTACKS frogs because I looked it up. That’s why I wrote “Frogs need you,” I was trying to be complimentary, but apparently you are biased against me because you mis-read my statement, either intentionally or deliberately.
When you start throwing words like “quack” around, it’s a signal you want to end reasonable discussion, scientific enquiry and civility in general. I knew Dr. John C. Lilly personally; you never even met him. I’ve read almost all of his work; have you even read one of his books? Just one?
Lilly was a brilliant man, unorthodox, opinionated and eccentric. He had numerous scientific achievements in high-altitude medicine, neurophysiology and physics before he began study dolphins. NOWHERE IN HIS LITERATURE does he claim as you do that “LSD improved man’s ability to talk to animals.” He used LSD when it was still a legal psychoanalytic research tool. I’ve taken LSD about 40 times (so now you can disparage me if you want, too) and because it reduces threshold potentials at the synapse, it can lead to the temporary emergence of new neural pathways. It lowers the barriers our minds erect to filter the flood of signals coming into them, which can lead to receiving previously undetected stimuli from the environment. But I’ve never had the furniture, or any other inanimate objects, talk to me. That’s a pretty cheap shot – and you know it.
You should really know something about a subject before you make an ass of yourself. Then at least you can claim to be a well-informed ass! Talking to your hippie friends doesn’t make you an expert on LSD, or even slightly knowledgeable on the subject.
The statement I made about the dolphin training the janitor is I believe from Dr. Ken Norris’ autobiography “The Dolphin Watcher,” but as I don’t have a copy here I can’t look it up. Maybe you’d care to disparage Dr. Norris, too?
“All respectable scientists” are not in agreement about the impossibility of human-dolphin communication as you claim. That’s an untenable blanket claim, and you know that, too! It’s the kind of thing pompous personalities say when they’re sure they’re right but too lazy to do the real work of looking up who actually said what.
Dr. Lou Hermann has conclusively demonstrated that they can utilize grammar and syntax, one of the few non-humans to do so. And he has said “Humans and dolphins process information in the same way.” “Respectable scientists,” as you put it, are far from consensus on this issue. They keep being amazed when a dolphin shows some new cleverness, like de-boning cuttlefish, while I’m not. On the contrary, I expect it.
Have you ever even met a dolphin, Andrew? Gotten any closer than the cheap seats at Sea World? Yet from your ivory tower of ignorant erudition, you choose to belittle me and my experience. You aren’t responding to my statements of fact because you have nothing, no experience, no resources, with which to challenge my 35 years of study in this field. So you resort to disparaging me and making snide remarks. How objective! How impartial! How SCIENTIFIC of you – NOT.
I really don’t need your contempt, Andrew. It’s a bad habit that suggests you have some unresolved self-image problems. I suggest you deal with them, before they adversely affect your career and your personal relationships. Sorry to call you on this but you obviously need somebody to put you in your place and if the gods have selected me to do that, so be it. Stick to your area of competence, frog-eating fungi, and leave dolphins, LSD and other “fringe areas” to those of us with the courage and the self-confidence to face the truly unknown.
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Malcolm,
Intrigued by your comments, I looked up some of the things you wrote on other blogs.
I think this is my favorite, and it’s comments like this that make people not take you seriously.
“After my dolphin lover died, I channeled her for a while, caused me a lot of mental problems because although I still loved her she was, uh, dead. I found her to be a lot more convincing while she was still alive and could push me to the bottom of her pool if I refused to let her masturbate on my sneakers.” (from the website Whalesinspace.com)
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Hi Malcolm,
You actually didn’t have my contempt. Maybe before you start throwing stones you should check your aim. Your area of expertise seems to be making ill-informed, judgmental, and poorly-articulated rants. Take some time to read what you write before you decide to broadcast it.
Regardless, you now have my contempt.
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Re: dude’s “dolphin lover”.
I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
An instant classic, that one.
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Malcolm,
Again, you need to figure out who’s saying what before you make your attacks. If you were to actually read the comments, you’d realize that I was nothing but polite to you until you began verbally abusing my friends.
As for not responding to your second comment, you should realize that as the administrator of this blog, I have the power to have the last word in any debate. By choosing to let your comment stand as the final word, I was showing you respect – respect for your beliefs and for your willingness to voice them in a public forum – and allowing my readers (who are largely sympathetic to my viewpoint) to make a judgment of your opinions untainted by my commentary. Since you have so demanded it, here it is:
Yours is the argument made by every pedophile and rapist the world over – “If she behaved like that, she must have wanted it.”
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The notion that humans and dolphins might be able to communicate isn’t totally preposterous- which is why it was originally investigated by real scientists (I do not include “Dr.” Lilly in that group). It was repudiated thoroughly decades ago.
The notion that humans can communicate with dolphins TELEPATHICALLY, AFTER THE DOLPHIN IN QUESTION IS DEAD, is preposterous.
I don’t care what you’ve gone through, dude- that’s out there. I’ve lost loved ones- loved ones who were human and actually capable of loving me back. It sucks. But I have never resorted to psychic communication with the dead. Let me tell you what got me through it- talking it out with other people who cared about me. I seriously recommend that you do the same, it helps.
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LOL @ Malcolm re: “you have no idea what true love is.”
My wife, lover, and best friend would beg to differ.
That’s one person by the way (so far as she knows).
Nice handling, SFS and WhySharksMatter!
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“she repeatedly made her desires unequivocally clear”
ridicule is not part of the scientific method – it is reserved for those who foist pseudoscience up as the real thing.
You have interpreted an animals actions through your own anthropomorphic filter, claiming she “loved you” – this is not science. Nor is it a rational argument upon which a “rational discussion” can be had.
I have a special bond with my cat – but I wouldn’t dare try to label its emotions or the motivations for its actions, whether he likes my warmth or knows I’ll give him food if he acts all cute. It is certainly not love in the pure human sense – he is not a human.
And telepathy with said dolphin? Does that even really need to be touched? Do you really think that is a good basis for a “rational argument” in a science blog?
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Malcolm,
The sexual exploitation of someone who is incapable of giving consent IS rape. This is why I said in the beginning that we have a fundamental philosophical difference that cannot be resolved.
To claim that you only got offended because of Dave’s comments is ludicrous. One would have to have the intellectual fortitude of a 3-year-old to suddenly become deeply offended by sarcasm and a bit of wit. Get over yourself. You came here looking for a fight so that you could validate “the man” keeping you down. When no fight appeared, you left, then came back a week later and tried to start one. “The man” isn’t keeping you down, you are.
The original article is signed by me, as all our articles are signed by the writers, as are all our comments. Don’t make excuses for being sloppy. And don’t make excuses for being lazy. We read the Lilly link and were unimpressed. Suck it up and get over yourself.
There are plenty of calm, rational debates going on all over the web. This was one until you got involved. If you think that all internet debates result in ad hominem, then perhaps the common denominator is you. If I were to make an ad hominem attack, I would imply that you were an intellectual abortion, that you fail at a basic level of human decency, that you deserve nothing but scorn. But I don’t, nor do I believe those are true. What I do believe is that you have a profoundly warped view of the world. If you can deal with that then quit whining, if you can’t good bye.
Suck it up and get over yourself. You won’t be missed.
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Irradiatus,
I just want to remind you again that the dolphin he was attempting to communicate telepathically with was no longer alive at the time of the attempt. I really think that this is an important detail. We’re not only talking about telepathic communication with an animal- we’re talking about BEYOND THE GRAVE telepathic communication with an animal. Seriously. Wow.
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link to angelfire.com
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Ooooh-kay… I think others have responded to MJB better than I can from the middle of Illinois. That was an interesting aside.
Anyway, I wish people would stop to think; dolphins are top predators, like bluefin tuna. The fact that there are millions of them suggests they’re living on something and that eventually, something lives on them. Focusing on one large charismatic organism misses the point that there’s a whole ecosystem that needs to be protected, and it ain’t because of Karma, it’s to save our own asses in the long run.
One example, and please correct me if I have this wrong. I read somewhere that cruise ships are required to grind up their plastic trash below a certain size before dumping it at sea. Presumably this is to protect larger sea creatures. But doesn’t that just endanger smaller sea creatures? The ones the larger sea creatures live on? Shouldn’t we be protecting whole ecosystems?
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Hey, is there a section just for latest news
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Um… the main page is organized so that the latest posts appear at the top.
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