[LINK] "Dolphins are not healers"
Via io9 I came across Lori Marino's article in Aeon Magazine making the obvious point that trying to heal children by having them swim with dolphins is, among other things, a pseudoscientific misuse of smart predators who are almost certainly themselves suffering. It's truly a very bad idea all around.
(Has anyone asked the dolphins what they think of this? They really should, and not via LSD-mediated hallucinations.)
The mythic belief in dolphins as healers has been reiterated down the ages from the first written records of encounters with these animals. In Greco-Roman times, dolphins were closely linked with the gods. Delphinus was a favourite messenger of Poseidon, who repaid him for his loyalty by placing an image of a dolphin in the stars. The Greek poet Oppian of Silica declared around 200 CE that ‘Diviner than the Dolphin is nothing yet created.’ Aristotle was the first to recognise that dolphins are mammals. Indeed, the root of the word dolphin, delphus, means womb, and underscores the long-standing belief in an intimate (even chimeric) connection between dolphins and humans.
[. . .]
The person most responsible for fuelling modern, New Age notions of dolphins as morally superior spiritual healers is the late neuroscientist John C Lilly, who pioneered research with captive dolphins in the 1960s. Lilly’s early work on dolphin brains and behaviour, conducted in laboratories in the US Virgin Islands and in Miami, was groundbreaking, bringing to light important knowledge about the species’ large, complex brains and keen intelligence. Lilly also provided evidence for dolphin sophistication in the realm of communication, reporting that dolphins could mimic the rhythm of human speech patterns.
In a paper published in Science in 1961, Lilly reported in detail on the range of ‘vocal’ exchanges between two dolphins in adjacent tanks, each equipped with a transmitter and receiver - Lilly’s dolphin ‘telephone’ - and noted how their ‘conversation’ followed polite rules; for example, when one ‘spoke’, the other was quiet. Lilly drew up a dolphin lexicon showing that dolphins used a variety of communication methods, from blowing and whistling to clicking. Convinced that dolphins had a sophisticated language of their own, he suggested that the species might provide the key to unlocking humanity’s potential to commune with extraterrestrials. He became part of the initial SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) group of radio-astronomy pioneers, who were so impressed with his tales of dolphin intelligence that they voted to call themselves ‘The Order of the Dolphin’.
However, Lilly and his followers eventually began mixing their own quasi-spiritual beliefs with their scientific work. They also began engaging in scientifically and ethically questionable research, including giving captive dolphins doses of LSD. In one ethically dubious experiment dating from 1965, Lilly’s research assistant Margaret Howe spent 10 weeks living with a dolphin named Peter in a tank rigged up to contain just enough water for the dolphin to swim in and for Howe to wade in. Within weeks, it became clear that Peter was less interested in Howe as a room mate than as a conjugal mate, and to stave off his increasingly aggressive behaviour, Lilly encouraged Howe to relieve the dolphin’s erections.
Lilly’s claims about the superior nature of dolphin spiritual and moral qualities soared well beyond any legitimate data. ‘We can presume that they have ethics, morals and regard for one another much more highly developed than does the human species,’ he wrote in The Dyadic Cyclone (1976). On the back of this conviction, he attempted to set up a formal but overly expansive programme of interspecies communication and co-operation between humans and dolphins called the Cetacean Nation, which was, needless to say, never fully realised.
Despite (or perhaps because of) his controversial activities, Lilly became a counter-cultural guru and was very influential in promoting the use of dolphins in captive research. His informal studies of dolphins interacting with autistic children led him to make outrageous claims about the psychic powers of dolphins, which have since become the basis for many pseudoscientific claims made by DAT facilities.
(Has anyone asked the dolphins what they think of this? They really should, and not via LSD-mediated hallucinations.)
The mythic belief in dolphins as healers has been reiterated down the ages from the first written records of encounters with these animals. In Greco-Roman times, dolphins were closely linked with the gods. Delphinus was a favourite messenger of Poseidon, who repaid him for his loyalty by placing an image of a dolphin in the stars. The Greek poet Oppian of Silica declared around 200 CE that ‘Diviner than the Dolphin is nothing yet created.’ Aristotle was the first to recognise that dolphins are mammals. Indeed, the root of the word dolphin, delphus, means womb, and underscores the long-standing belief in an intimate (even chimeric) connection between dolphins and humans.
[. . .]
The person most responsible for fuelling modern, New Age notions of dolphins as morally superior spiritual healers is the late neuroscientist John C Lilly, who pioneered research with captive dolphins in the 1960s. Lilly’s early work on dolphin brains and behaviour, conducted in laboratories in the US Virgin Islands and in Miami, was groundbreaking, bringing to light important knowledge about the species’ large, complex brains and keen intelligence. Lilly also provided evidence for dolphin sophistication in the realm of communication, reporting that dolphins could mimic the rhythm of human speech patterns.
In a paper published in Science in 1961, Lilly reported in detail on the range of ‘vocal’ exchanges between two dolphins in adjacent tanks, each equipped with a transmitter and receiver - Lilly’s dolphin ‘telephone’ - and noted how their ‘conversation’ followed polite rules; for example, when one ‘spoke’, the other was quiet. Lilly drew up a dolphin lexicon showing that dolphins used a variety of communication methods, from blowing and whistling to clicking. Convinced that dolphins had a sophisticated language of their own, he suggested that the species might provide the key to unlocking humanity’s potential to commune with extraterrestrials. He became part of the initial SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) group of radio-astronomy pioneers, who were so impressed with his tales of dolphin intelligence that they voted to call themselves ‘The Order of the Dolphin’.
However, Lilly and his followers eventually began mixing their own quasi-spiritual beliefs with their scientific work. They also began engaging in scientifically and ethically questionable research, including giving captive dolphins doses of LSD. In one ethically dubious experiment dating from 1965, Lilly’s research assistant Margaret Howe spent 10 weeks living with a dolphin named Peter in a tank rigged up to contain just enough water for the dolphin to swim in and for Howe to wade in. Within weeks, it became clear that Peter was less interested in Howe as a room mate than as a conjugal mate, and to stave off his increasingly aggressive behaviour, Lilly encouraged Howe to relieve the dolphin’s erections.
Lilly’s claims about the superior nature of dolphin spiritual and moral qualities soared well beyond any legitimate data. ‘We can presume that they have ethics, morals and regard for one another much more highly developed than does the human species,’ he wrote in The Dyadic Cyclone (1976). On the back of this conviction, he attempted to set up a formal but overly expansive programme of interspecies communication and co-operation between humans and dolphins called the Cetacean Nation, which was, needless to say, never fully realised.
Despite (or perhaps because of) his controversial activities, Lilly became a counter-cultural guru and was very influential in promoting the use of dolphins in captive research. His informal studies of dolphins interacting with autistic children led him to make outrageous claims about the psychic powers of dolphins, which have since become the basis for many pseudoscientific claims made by DAT facilities.