Judging by their friendly faces and playful nature, it might seem that wild dolphins always friendly. But a bottlenose dolphin reportedly deliberately pushed a man underwater while he was swimming in the sea in County Cork, Ireland.
The animal "pounced" on the swimmer twice, prompting experts to warn swimmers to stay away from the large predators.
The incident occurred on July 26, reports the Irish Sherkin, according to a report published by the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG), saying the animal acted “aggressively.”
The group’s journal reads: “We are aware of a report of an adult swimmer in a wetsuit and mask swimming underwater near an anchored yacht who was aggressively pushed by a dolphin. As a result, he received something like a shock. The IWDG now warns swimmers to exercise "extreme caution" when attempting to interact with large maritime representatives and respect the space of this very much big predator at the top of the food chain."
"Dolphins are cute and cuddly, but they are not our 'friends' nor do they benefit from human contact."
In the area, the dolphin swims close to boats, but experts say it is solitary and does not enjoy human contact.
A group of swimmers said: “Don't confuse the shape of their jaws with their smile. They can cause serious injury to humans and have killed in the past.” It is unknown why dolphins attack people or large animals such as porpoises; unlike sharks, they do not eat their prey.
An IWDG expert told BBC News it was impossible to know whether a dolphin was deliberately attacking a human or whether it was trying to play with it.
Video. Dolphin pesters swimmers
Dolphins often engage in rough play, grabbing each other and giving chase, so it's possible the dolphin was playing, but some experts say the animals sometimes attack people when they like them.
Dolphins can engage in violent mating behavior, where they act in groups to chase and mate with a female of their species for several weeks, even if she is not interested in the process. To prevent the female from escaping, they make aggressive noises, threatening movements and even bite around her tail.And if she tries to swim away, they chase her behind.
Male dolphins are known to fight and kill rivals and their offspring, presumably by mistake, and humans can also get caught up in this circle. In one study, 5 young bottlenose dolphins fatally injured another dolphin's calves.Infanticide by males also occurs among dolphins, as in other species, since females At once become ready for pregnancy after the death of the baby.The study also indicates that violent interactions bottlenose dolphins With porpoises ( only this study mentions the order100 incidents) may occur because they confuse infants of the two species. And further. D elphins can stay awake for five days straight without losing their mental state.And even after such a lack of sleep, they don’t even have to try hard to catch up with the little dolphin.
Trevor Spradlin, a federal dolphin expert said "The New York Times", that he had already told of dozens of bites on people, some of whom the bottlenose dolphin dragged under water, the length of the animal was 12 feet (3.7 meters). They have sharp teeth adapted for tearing fish and squid.
Dolphins are voracious predators, they are not crystal clear and strict vegetarians. No, they eat raw meat.When hunting, they coordinate their efforts and focus on destroying the prey.Dolphins are inventive creatures and because of them no one can feel safe,even on land. Many professional fishermen know that if they see a school of dolphins in open ocean, then they will definitely lead them to a school of fish, which they will hunt according to a clearly choreographed scenario.
Plus, when you see their penises, you probably won't want to be near them. Biologists report that their penises are quite tenacious, which is why female dolphins can often get injured.
Video. Dolphin's pussy
Alarming rise in fatal attacks on porpoises is baffling experts
A sharp rise in fatal dolphin attacks on porpoises in one of Britain's main breeding seas is baffling scientists. In July, the calm waters of Cardigan Bay in Wales turned red when bottlenose dolphins killed smaller porpoises.
Oceanologists are trying to understand why the number of attacks has increased: three out of four attacks are fatal.
Researchers from the Center wildlife Cardigan Bay (CBMWC) said they have always known that dolphins attack porpoises, but the frequency of recent attacks is alarming.
Experts have reported beached porpoises floating with punctured lungs and other internal injuries caused by the dolphins.
Bottlenose dolphin killing a porpoise
People have repeatedly witnessed when bottlenose dolphins forced porpoises underwater, killing them with blows and throwing them into the air.
Cardigan Bay is home to the largest resident population of dolphins in Europe, which shares these secluded areas with a smaller population of porpoises.
Scientist Sarah Perry said she was baffled by the recent spate of deadly attacks.
"It's possible that they see porpoises as competitors for food, especially if there is a shortage of prey in the area," she said. “Although porpoises generally feed on smaller prey than dolphins. However, there was no sign of any food shortage."
Another theory is that the low number of females encourages males to attack. Male dolphins are known to kill young dolphins in order to mate with the calf's mother. Porpoises are close in size to a baby dolphin.
Previously reported: “A woman who fed a pair of dolphins and then jumped into the water to swim with them was bitten by them. "He literally tore my left leg in her mouth," she said during her week-long hospital stay."
Just last summer, two women were taken to hospital with injuries after they were attacked off the coast of County Clare by a female dolphin known as Dusty. There have been frequent reports of animals attacking porpoises in ports.
“Such interactions between bottlenose dolphins and porpoises are invariably aggressive and consistently result in death of porpoises, blunt force trauma from ramming, which can lead to more serious injuries,” the IWDG reports.
“They (the interactions) are likely to be common throughout Irish coastal waters where the ranges of the two coastal species overlap.”
Video. Datsey Dolphin Attack
Can a dolphin rape a person?
So, are there any confirmed cases of dolphin rape of a person? No.
To put it mildly, “rape” would be an exaggeration, not to mention a questionable choice of word itself. However, there have certainly been cases where dolphins behaved very badly.
The Nat Geo Wild channel showed a video clip of a dolphin at a water park jumping on a woman in a rather peculiar manner: the dolphin emerges from the pool between the woman's legs, plops down on her and begins thrusting, although there is no clear sign that he is sexually aroused.
Video. Dolphin tries to rape a tourist
But dolphins are sexually aroused and their sexual apparatus is such that rape cannot be ruled out on the grounds of mechanical impossibility. There are many videos on YouTube of dolphins with the unmistakable erect penis trying to persistently and aggressively insert it into the crotch of a female snorkeler, while another diver tries to shoo away the rapist (you saw the video itself above).
In 2002, authorities warned swimmers in Weymouth Harbor, England, about the persistent dolphin Georges. "This dolphin was actually becoming very sexually aggressive," the dolphin's trainer reported. "He's already tried to mate with some divers."
A research assistant named Margaret Howe claims that during a study of dolphins in 1963, she repeatedly allowed a dolphin named Peter to rub against her legs and arms. She describes the relationship as “sexual on his part... not really sexual in nature. Perhaps sensual."
Finally we have writer Malcolm Brenner, who claims that back in the 70s he had a six-month affair with a female dolphin named Dolly. Brenner, who also admitted to sexual relations with the dog, said it was Dolly's idea. He was condemned for "interspecies sexual intercourse." Brenner believes that Dolly was so distraught after she was moved to another water park that she decided to commit suicide.
Photo Caricature of a woman being raped by a dolphin
Of course, the last two examples involve supposedly consensual sex. But rape is out of the question; this is due to the problems of “docking” a person with a dolphin, so rape in the strict sense of the word seems unlikely. The fact remains that dolphins can be sexually aggressive and this has been known to put people at risk of injury or drowning.
Many argue that dolphins are not capable of rape because all non-human creatures cannot understand the idea of mutuality and just do what happens naturally. The term "forced copulation" can be seen regularly in scientific works, maybe we should use it better. As you know, this kind of thing is not uncommon in the animal kingdom.
Gangs of male dolphins can isolate a female, swat her around with their tails, and forcefully copulate with her for weeks. Ducks are notorious for apparently sometimes not wanting mates, often due to a lack of the opposite sex. This may be why female ducks have evolved to manipulate the shape of their vaginas, encouraging fertilization only with imaginative drakes.
Spider monkeys sometimes engage in forced copulation, but this is more common among orangutans, primarily young males, which encourages females to mate with older orangutans to avoid sexual advances.
During mating, the male garter snake lies on top of the female and rhythmically presses on her lungs, preventing her from breathing. Stress apparently forces the female to open her cloaca, which allows the male to introduce his sperm.
If dolphins cannot forcibly “enter” people, are there animals that are capable of this? Bestiality aside, there is only one reliable report, which involves orangutans studied in a study at a camp in Borneo by primatologist Birute Galdikas. One scientist who spent time there described an attempted sexual attack on a female orangutan named Apollo Bob. The woman was only saved when another person chased away the intruder with a stick.
But it was even worse, Galdikas herself recalls. While she was in the jungle one day with her female cook, a crazed male orangutan named Gundul attacked the cook and mounted her. The women were unable to fight the animal and the orangutan proceeded to mate with the cook as she lay in the arms of the helpless Galdikas. Rape? No, there are scholastic differences in this. Galdikas believes that although the chef was shocked, perhaps the incident should be considered an animal attack, and not sexual assault, and of course the pregnancy could not have occurred. But, nevertheless, without any doubt it was forced copulation.
Video. Dolphin attacks. Investigation
A few days before the new year 2007, a young woman became the next victim of a dolphin in New Zealand. A routine boat ride turned into a heart attack for her after a sudden attack by a dolphin.
Last September, the population of the coast of Brittany was literally terrorized by a dolphin, which overturned boats, tore nets, and once attacked a fishing boat and threw one of the fishermen into the water.
Killing for fun
“Zoologists believed that this dolphin was expelled from his herd several years ago by his relatives, and since then he began to lead the lifestyle of a lonely hooligan.”
Local authorities were even forced to create a crisis headquarters and intended to ban swimming in dangerous places. However, despite its aggressiveness, the dolphin was too popular among tourists, and, on the advice of experts, they decided to simply drive the animal away from the coast with noise. This method has been successfully used when it is necessary to scare away mammals from tuna nets.
Dolphins already for a long time they are studying, trying to find with them mutual language, endow them with extrasensory abilities.
However, contrary to prevailing myths, dolphins are not such good-natured and sweet creatures. Over the past ten years of research, hundreds and hundreds of cases have been recorded in which dolphins attacked their relatives - “porpoises” and killed them, using their elongated noses as sticks, and then opened the bodies of the dead sharp teeth. Moreover, their desire to kill was not dictated by hunger.
For the first time, experts began studying the aggressiveness of dolphins in the mid-90s of the last century. Scottish scientists Ben Wilson and Harry Ross, who studied the behavior of bottlenose dolphins on the northern coast of Scotland, discovered that the corpses of porpoises had numerous injuries: broken spines, ruptured lungs.
When traces of dolphin teeth were found on the carcasses, scientists realized that the “peaceful and kind” bottlenose dolphins are in fact ruthless and cold-blooded killers who kill porpoises not because they feed on their territory, but for fun! They play with the victim for a long time, throwing it from one dolphin to another, practically dooming the pigs to a long death.
Further observations revealed that bottlenose dolphins also kill calves of their own species from other groups. They do this in order to again cover the female, who, due to the death of the cub, again comes into a state of estrus.
In general, dolphins can safely be called the most sexually horny creatures on Earth. After the person, of course. American scientists have discovered entire herds of bachelor males who jointly attack other herds, beat off a female and then keep her in their group for several months. Moreover, each of the bachelors commits multiple violent sexual acts with her.
If there are no females nearby, or they are well protected by their “husbands,” anxious dolphins attack easier prey – people!
A couple of years ago, holidaymakers on the ocean in Weymouth (Dorset) received a warning about the danger of being carried out to sea by a sexually horny dolphin. As the British Times reported, the animal repeatedly tried to lure bathing women as far from the coast as possible and copulate with them.
“This animal is extremely sexually aggressive,” said American zoologist Rick O’Barry in connection with this case. “When dolphins are sexually aroused, they try to drive the swimmer, usually a woman, to a remote, secluded area away from the beach, boats and boats crowded with people.”
According to the scientist, aggressive behavior An animal whose weight reaches 180 kilograms can cause the death of a person.
A dolphin that attacked swimmers in Weymouth received several wounds from the propellers of boats and motorboats, but left coastal waters only after employees coast guard They started a real hunt for him.
Armed and very dangerous
A few days before the new year 2007, a young woman became the next victim of a dolphin in New Zealand. A routine boat ride turned into a heart attack for her after a sudden attack by a dolphin.
According to experts, the animal deliberately chose the woman as its target. The dolphin jumped out of the water, aiming specifically at the boat, and fell straight onto the unfortunate New Zealander. After which, with a “joyful” grunt, he jumped out of the boat and immediately disappeared into the depths.
The sea bully did not inflict serious physical injuries on his victim, but the shock from the sudden attack was so strong that a healthy 27-year-old woman immediately suffered a heart attack.
Fortunately, there was a friend in the boat with her, who hastened to call mobile phone help.
According to American marine experts, due to the aggressiveness of dolphins towards humans, the situation in the southern United States is worsening every year. If earlier they seemed to save drowning people, now, on the contrary, they constantly attack swimmers and try to drown them!
So, in Hawaii, three angry dolphins literally tore to pieces a scuba diver for no apparent reason. In Miami, four swimmers were beaten to death by a pack of animals. And this is not counting other cases that did not end so fatally!
The situation is further complicated by the fact that somewhere off the coast of the United States, several dozen fighting dolphins laden with chemical weapons are plying the ocean!
"These dolphins, trained to neutralize terrorist divers, disappeared from the aquarium of the Pontchartrain military base" during Hurricane Katrina.
As one of the US Navy headquarters officers told reporters, during the hurricane the waters of the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain flooded New Orleans, and then subsided and carried the dolphins into the Gulf of Mexico.
And now anyone in a wetsuit - be it a surfer or a diver - is a potential enemy for those trained to kill dolphins.
The saboteur animals were captured by the military back in 2001, a year after terrorists blew up an American destroyer in the territorial waters of Yemen.
At the Pontchartrain base, dolphins were trained to attack enemy reconnaissance scuba divers, equipped with special pistols attached to the animals’ noses, and taught to use them to hit a target with darts filled with a narcotic substance.
Even the smartest beast remains a beast
After numerous studies, scientists have come to the conclusion that stories about dolphins allegedly saving drowning people are nothing more than a misunderstanding. According to experts, dolphins simply play with people, preventing them from drowning.
It is also a legend that dolphins save people from sharks. There is some truth in this, but not much. Seeing a drowning man among sharks, dolphins rush to him as a potential toy, and the sharks are forced to retreat, since they do not risk getting involved with a stronger opponent.
Studies over the past decade have shown that while trained dolphins are indeed safe for people, wild representatives of the dolphin tribe are by no means so friendly. These are cold-blooded killers and should be avoided. And, according to scientists, it will only get worse. Chemical and biological waste in the World Ocean cause various mutations in animals, including increased aggressiveness.
But even without these factors, it should be remembered that, despite attempts to “humanize” dolphins, they were and remain active predators and hunters. Therefore, we should not judge dolphins by the standards of our morality. A beast, even the smartest one, remains a beast.
The latest case of dolphins being “unfriendly” towards humans occurred in Yalta. On the afternoon of January 2, 2007, a local 40-year-old “walrus” decided to swim in the area of the former city beach.
Fortunately, officers of the operational group of the Yalta Department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations were nearby. What happened next, says V. Ivanov, assistant to the head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Ukraine in Crimea:
“Hearing a message over the loudspeaker that there was a man in the sea who was screaming and asking for help, the guys rushed to the shore, grabbing a long stick along the way. The Walrus was about thirty meters from the shore. Rescuers ran to the breakwater and saw that the unfortunate swimmer had been attacked by dolphins and was being pushed into the sea.
The screams of the rescuers did not frighten the animals, so the Ministry of Emergency Situations had to hit the stick several times not only on the water, but also on the dolphins. Only after this did they fall behind the “walrus”. Using the same stick, the unfortunate man was pulled ashore. The man was in a state of shock, his arms and legs were shaking, his teeth were chattering and he couldn’t really explain anything.”
As it turned out, the dolphins had driven the horse mackerel between the breakwaters and were feeding. Out of nowhere, they probably mistook the bather who came from nowhere for a competitor who had encroached on their prey, and began to drive the uninvited guest further into the sea, pushing him with their noses. The fact that they doom a person to death in this way apparently did not bother the dolphins at all...
Gennady FEDOTOV, staff correspondent of AN
Many of us know dolphins as intelligent and good creatures, however, one can still argue about their kindness. This post will tell us about all the qualities of dolphins, including completely shocking information.
Most of research is devoted to the most common subspecies - bottlenose dolphins. The first serious work was published in 1984: scientists identified the ability of a female individual to perceive and remember sounds generated by a computer. At the second stage, biologists showed the dolphin the connection between sounds and musical instruments.
Clever Akekamai very quickly learned this logical chain. Moreover, she began to communicate using new sounds - when scientists demanded it. In fact, the dolphin was able to learn a foreign language.
But Akekamai's case is not an exception to the rule. In the wild, each dolphin can make its own, special type of sound, which can be called its personal signature.
Scientists removed one dolphin from the pod and, several months later, reproduced it sound signal for the individuals remaining in the pool. They began to look for the source - realizing that the clicks were coming not from their lost brother, but from the speakers, they lost interest.
Dolphins remember and recognize each other. A 2013 study showed that these intelligent animals are able to recognize the speech of a fellow animal, even decades after separation.
There are also more impressive data. For example, dolphins clearly identify their appearance. In order to understand this, scientists lowered a painted (for experimental purposes) specimen into a pool, on the wall of which a mirror was attached. The dolphin spent a whole half hour with him, looking at the metamorphoses in surprise.
Dolphins are very smart. Just like people, they can be good - or they can be evil. - Richard Connor, CEO of The Dolphin Research Alliance.
The breeding season provokes wild competition for females. Representatives of the stronger sex stop at nothing: no firm “no” is accepted from the female individual. Richard Connor witnessed a marriage ceremony that looked more like rape. Three males chased the female for several hours, seeking her favor.
As it turned out later, this is standard mating behavior of dolphins. During the mating period, males can form groups of 12 or more members: this makes it easier to force the female to cooperate.
The information received confused the researchers. Dolphins have always been considered the kindest creatures - as it turned out, they all have their own dark side.
From 1996 to 1997, as many as 37 very young bottlenose dolphins washed up on Virginia beaches. In an attempt to understand the motives, scientists performed autopsies on the bodies and found that each of the victims had been severely beaten. Broken ribs, punctured lungs, prolapsed internal organs….
Responsibility for the death of young animals lies with older males. Dolphins form schools and kill a newborn calf to provoke a new estrus in the mother. This behavior gives rise to a defensive response: females try to mate with members of different packs in order to protect the unborn child - biological father will not attack him.
This, in turn, increases the rate of inbreeding. For example, a study of a pod from Shark Bay showed that dolphins practice incest - and do it quite often.
Try typing “rapist dolphins” into a search engine and you’ll get great amount references to horror stories about male dolphins raping female dolphins, male dolphins raping other male dolphins, dolphin gang rape, and even dolphins raping people.
One website even dedicated a page creepy stories stories that dolphins allegedly regularly kidnap swimmers and take them to some kind of underwater “cave of violence” to commit abuse on them. However, if you try to find anything about dolphin rape in a more or less serious scientific literature, then you will be wasting your time. There is nothing like it there.
The reason for this discrepancy is simple: the term “rape” is not an appropriate term to describe dolphin behavior. First of all, rape presupposes a lack of consent on the part of one of the parties, and how can we know to what extent dolphins or any other animals can express consent or disagreement?
Talking about “sexual acts without the consent of one of the parties” that entails “moral and legal consequences”, makes sense only in relation to human society. Therefore, in the early 1980s, scientists generally abandoned the use of the term “rape” in relation to animals.
The term “forced copulation” is considered correct in the scientific community, which implies aggressive holding of the female by the male during mating. Similar behavior is observed in ducks, lizards, fruit flies, crickets, orangutans, chimpanzees and many other species. But not the dolphins.
Although the media is happy to suck up more and more stories about “rapist dolphins,” lovers of forced copulation can be found among primates, even among birds or insects – but they are not among dolphins!
Below is a summary scientific work, regarding aggressive sexual behavior that scientists have observed in dolphins and which is often mistaken for “dolphin rape”:
Coercion to mate is a term often used to describe behavior periodically observed in bottlenose dolphins found in Shark Bay, Australia, and Sarasota Bay, Florida. Individual males and groups of males use different tactics to increase their chances of mating with females. In Shark Bay, for example, a group of male dolphins can often be seen in the company of one female for quite a long time. Sometimes such periods begin with the pursuit of a female, and sometimes the female joins the group herself. Sometimes males behave aggressively when males from another group try to “fight off” a female.
Dolphins can also use other tactics to force a female to mate. One of them is killing the cubs so that the female goes into estrus.
But, despite all the tricks and aggressive behavior, dolphins do not exhibit anything that could be called forced copulation. The tactics mentioned above are indirect - although they are clearly aimed at persuading the female to mate, there is no physical violence.
In other words, even if we assume that the term “forced copulation” in animals is equivalent to what in human society defined as “rape” (that is, sexual contact without the consent of one of the parties), this behavior has never been observed in dolphins.
You may ask: how do you know if it's a male? bottlenose dolphins in love and dangerous? It’s very simple: at this time, its white-yellowish belly begins to glow pink, like a scarlet dawn. Of course, not everyone dolphin love manifests itself so aggressively, but it is better to know, as they say, “where the trap is.”
If you don't take it edge cases, bottlenose dolphins are really friendly and sociable. (Until they, figuratively speaking, “step on their tail.”) To be honest, I am pleased with their ability to be able to stand up for themselves. This is exactly what we humans need to do, otherwise we will leave the planet without dolphins.
After thinking about this topic, I came to the conclusion that at first dolphins are so friendly to humans because they have incredibly little experience communicating with us, just like wild animals somewhere “in a bear’s corner.” So, working in Kamchatka, I observed how animals - hares, foxes, otters, wolverines - are not afraid of people, do not run away from them, but, on the contrary, come closer and, having seen enough, calmly leave. Apparently, dolphins are just as interesting to us as long as we don’t become too intrusive to them. Especially often, latent aggression comes from male coaches. Therefore, they are more likely to "get" from animals than women.
Due to the battles that dolphins wage among themselves for females and for leadership, their bodies are streaked with long white multi-row stripes - healed scratches (scars) from the teeth of their relatives. And bottlenose dolphins have something to fight with: they literally have a steel snout, their jaws are lined with 88 hook-shaped teeth, and their fins are very hard along the front edge. A particularly serious weapon is the tail. A dolphin can easily break a human's hip with a blow from its tail. It’s good that they don’t resort to such measures when communicating with people.
From our experience, we have been convinced that these animals are well versed in which swimmers they can behave with: they treat the weak with caution, with the strong, on the contrary, assertively and even rudely. The last dolphin in my work allowed herself, flying up to me at high speed, to turn sharply and quickly slide her body along my side and arm, leaving abrasions and scratches on them.
In fact, bottlenose dolphins are perfect living torpedoes, capable of reaching speeds of up to 50 kilometers per hour (!) over a short distance and stopping almost instantly. This is the tactic they use when fighting sharks and piercing their body in the gill slits, which ends in the death of the shark.
In nature, dolphins (and bottlenose dolphins in particular) have only three enemies - humans, killer whales and sharks, which is quite a lot, since this list is headed by humans. So, until the mid-70s in the Black Sea, dolphins caught while sweeping fish schools with nets were killed, and their bodies were ground into flour, which was fed to livestock...
It must be said that the most ardent enemies of dolphins are still fishermen, who consider them as competitors. There was such a case in my practice. Working with bottlenose dolphins, we kept some of the unoccupied animals three kilometers from the Utrish sea station (in the North Caucasus) on a semi-freshwater lake in net enclosures - where the Utrish Dolphinarium of our Institute of Ecology and Evolution is now located. A.N. Severtsov RAS (Moscow). One day, an employee came running to me and said that some people on the lake were beating our dolphins with stones. Immediately, in the company of the strongest guys, we went there by car. Indeed, there was a jeep on the shore of the lake, and five men were running along the shore nearby and throwing stones at our precious animals.
Horrible picture!
We tried to reason with them - no effect! It turned out that these were the very intoxicated chairman of the fish farm (!) and his subordinates. Only the threat of a large lawsuit for every maimed or killed animal stopped the vandals. And they quickly retreated. Fortunately, there were no dolphin casualties.
Against this background, people’s attitude towards animals looks much more humane ancient times and the so-called backward peoples of our time. Thus, the fishermen of ancient Hellas, on the contrary, attracted dolphins to hunt for fish. It happened in the following way: as soon as the fishermen noticed a school of fish entering the lagoon or bay, they knocked stones against each other underwater. The sound carried far in the water. A herd of dolphins swam towards him, dispersed and enveloped the school in an arc or front, and then drove him to the shore, where fishermen swept the fish with nets. Then they pulled the catch ashore. And they always gave part of the catch to the dolphins in gratitude for their help. Agree, such unity of people with nature exudes warmth.
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