Woman Who Made Sweet, Gentle Love With a Dolphin Says It Was Sensuous

Margaret Howe Lovatt, a researcher who participated in a NASA-funded experiment to teach dolphins to speak English, got more than she bargained for when an adolescent dolphin became sexual with her. But she didn't mind.

Lovatt was part of a small group of researchers who worked with dolphins in the 60s. She was tasked with helping Peter (no pun intended), an adolescent dolphin learn to communicate in English so that he would tell the government all the secrets of the deep —Where is Atlantis? Is King Triton actually that handsome IRL? Why is Flipper so annoying all the time? — but the dolphin, who was coming into his own sexually, had other ideas. Now Lovatt has spoken out about the experiments for the first time.




Lovatt has kept her silence on the experiments, which ended with scandal and accusations of dolphins being abused by being forced to take LSD, for many years but now a new documentary — The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins — is letting her discuss her relationship with Peter for the first time. And she says their relationship wasn't sexual, at least not in the way that Hustler made it sound when they published a report on the pair.


