A dolphin trainer whose aquatic student ended up ‘falling in love’ with her during their lessons has admitted to giving the animal a helping hand when it began to feel aroused.
There’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d write today.
The bizarre task was taken on by Margaret Howe Lovatt after she began working alongside John Lilly; an American neuroscientist who had opened a lab with financial backing from NASA as he sought to nurture closer relationships between humans and dolphins.
During her time in the lab, Lovatt spent three months living with one particular dolphin, named Peter, as she strove to try and achieve one of Lilly’s dreams: teach the animals to speak English.
According to The Guardian, she explained: “I chose to work with Peter because he had not had any human-like sound training and the other two had.”
The research was scientific, but things became complicated after Lovatt realized that Peter was ‘very, very interested in [her] anatomy’.
Andy Williamson, who looked after the animals’ health, noted that dolphins ‘get sexual urges’, so Lovatt initially tried to help Peter by putting him back with two other female dolphins at the facility.
Margaret looked back on her time with Peter later in life (BBC)
However, eventually it became too disruptive to continue transporting Peter to be with his female companions, so Lovatt took matters into her own hands. Literally.
Lovatt began to relieve Peter herself, ‘manually’.
Speaking in a BBC documentary, she explained: “It was just easier to incorporate that and let it happen. It was very precious, it was very gentle. Peter was right there, he knew that I was right there.”
Lovall went on to explain that while the act might have been ‘sexual’ on Peter’s side, that was not the case for her.
However, she added: “Sensuous, perhaps.”
Margaret sought to teach the dolphins to speak English (BBC)
“t would just become part of what was going on, like an itch – just get rid of it, scratch it and move on. And that’s really all it was,” she said. “I was there to get to know Peter. That was part of Peter.”
Though Lovatt was still focused on her research, she admitted her encounters with Peter began to overshadow the experiment – particularly when a story about them appeared in Hustler magazine.
“It’s a bit uncomfortable,” she said, looking back. “The worst experiment in the world, I’ve read somewhere, was me and Peter. That’s fine, I don’t mind. But that was not the point of it, nor the result of it. So I just ignore it.”
