Seriously, People, Enough With the Dolphin Obsession

Screen shot from http://youtu.be/toyShA04xas

I don’t get the obsession people have with Dolphins. I really don’t understand it.

The first time I heard about it, I was in my freshman year of high school. In the middle of one of many grammar lectures, my English teacher announced to us that it was her life’s dream to swim with dolphins. She told us how she had been close a few times — had seen them off in the distance — but never has been able to get near enough to get in the water with them. Our class released out a collective sigh as if to say, “Isn’t that cute?”

Clearly, no one in that room knew anything about dolphins.

Since then, I have heard the same wish echoed a number of times by different individuals. People, dolphins aren’t sea kittens. As much as you want to hug, love and swim amongst them, they’re not really down with that.

What dolphins are down with, on the other hand, is rape. Yeah, I said it. Dolphins will rape females and other males to assert dominance. They have also been known to target human swimmers as well.

Dolphins also kill babies; the males will kill different species of baby animals as well as baby dolphins. Researchers studying dolphins in Grassy Key have also observed dolphins “playing” by tossing around a baby shark like a volleyball. If that all weren’t enough, dolphins can stay awake for up to fifteen days straight because they only sleep with half of their brain at a time. Without this function, dolphins would likely drown or fall prey to sharks, but what this really means is there are a bunch of horny, violent dolphins awake at all times.

Even with all that information out there, people are still infatuated with dolphins. So infatuated, in fact, that some are choosing to opt for dolphin-assisted births. Now the couple in this picture probably looks a lot like you would expect them to, but they aren’t the only couple that is choosing or will choose to go this route. Though The Sirius Institute, where the couple will be going for the birth, claim that a dolphin-assisted birth is completely safe, it’s just not a good idea. Even if violence was not a possibility, there is still a risk of disease transmission from human to dolphin and vice versa.

While I’ve done a lot of dolphin-bashing here, I’m in no way advocating that humans should start harming dolphins because of their actions. They’re wild creatures and this is what they do by nature. We should just leave them alone, entirely. In fact, studies are showing that human interaction may be negatively affecting dolphin populations.

So seriously, people, enough with the dolphin obsession.

Dolphins are bastards. Every single one of them.

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Charlie Crespo (@Little_Utopia) is the editor-in-chief of Little Utopia.