Margaret Howe Lovatt, dolphin sexual activity, and the most bizarre NASA experiment of all time
If you find a child of the 20th century who didn’t at some point during their childhood dream of being an astronaut and working for NASA, then I’d commend your only slightly unnerving ability to hunt people.
It’s one of the most common dream jobs among children, and honestly, how could it not be?
Plonk a kid in front of Star Wars or Doctor Who and you’ve got a recipe for a fascination with the great unknown that could define their entire life. It’s that sort of passion that NASA thrives on. It means they have a never-ending stream of nerds dreaming of the stars lining up to work for them at all times. Hoping that one day, they too could join the likes of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in leaving this cursed Earth for (metaphorically) greener pastures.
The truth is, though, that NASA actually do a hell of a lot more than shoot people into space. They have research facilities dedicated to every kind of theoretical and empirical science you could possibly think of. Sure, it all leads back to exploring the mysteries of space, but trying to understand the final frontier will lead you to some strange and unexpected places. If you need proof, look no further than a top-secret laboratory set up by NASA in the Caribbean island of St Thomas in the early 1960s.
This facility was set up to study that most human-like of sea creatures, dolphins! Led by the famed neuroscientist Dr John Lilly, the facility housed three dolphins named Sissy, Pamela and Peter, who were being studied in order to find a way for humanity to communicate with the aquatic mammals. However, one story from this research facility overshadowed all others, one that concerned a woman hired to monitor the dolphins, Margaret Howe Lovatt.
If you haven’t heard this story, then, yes, it’s exactly the kind of story you’re thinking of. Well, almost.
Wait, they didn’t, did they?!
Lovatt had a far less exhaustive route into NASA than most. Her job application process was literally hearing that the facility existed from her brother-in-law, had dolphins in it, driving down and scoring a chance encounter with the facility’s head scientist.
Within the week, she had a job monitoring the dolphins, building a particularly close relationship with Peter in particular. Now, look. Yes, this story is kind of going where you think it’s going, but dolphins building relationships with humans isn’t actually that unusual. No, not like that, for Christ’s sake.
“Sissy was the biggest. Pushy, loud, she sort of ran the show. Pamela was very shy and fearful. And Peter was a young guy. He was sexually coming of age and a bit naughty.”
Margaret Lovatt
See, dolphins are even smarter than you’re thinking. They aren’t smart for animals; they’re smart compared to most humans, with friendly, cheeky personalities. They have an unerring memory for people, and when they’re in captivity, it’s incredibly common for them to build genuine friendships with their handlers.
As Lovatt continued to work with the dolphins, she developed a particular friendship with Peter, who was a young dolphin growing into his adolescence. With adolescence in any living being comes certain urges, and those urges were…getting in the way of their work.
So yes. Lovatt helped Peter through his urges in exactly the way that you’re thinking she did. It wasn’t something she was forced to do by her bosses; she was more than happy to do it, seeing it as nothing more than scratching a particular kind of itch.
“It wasn’t sexual on my part,” Lovatt said. “Sensuous, perhaps. It seemed to me that it made the bond closer. Not because of the sexual activity, but because of the lack of having to keep breaking. And that’s really all it was. I was there to get to know Peter. That was part of Peter … It would just become part of what was going on, like an itch, just get rid of that scratch and we would be done and move on”.
By working through these issues, Lovatt and her team of scientists were able to continue their work in finding ways of communicating with dolphins, and if you look at their work, some of it is genuinely mind-boggling. Through her teachings, Lovatt was able to get a literal dolphin to say the words “Hello Margaret”.
Apparently, Peter had trouble with his M’s, the poor lamb.
That’s extraordinary….but then the press got hold of the story. You can guess what part of it they focused on. That wasn’t the only part they focused on, though. Lilly had also gotten super into LSD, and despite Lovatt’s best efforts, couldn’t stop him from injecting the dolphins with the drug. It had no effect on them, but the uproar and ridicule that the facility and its research were getting meant that NASA put the kibosh on it, closing the facility months after an article about it was published in Hustler, of all magazines.
Now, I know what this story sounds like to most people. A gross-out at best and animal abuse at worst. I won’t talk down to you and say the revulsion you’re probably feeling isn’t justified and that the whole thing was merely misunderstood. However, the hurt felt here wasn’t limited to humans. After the facility was closed, Peter was shipped off to another facility in Miami, one built into a disused bank building. After building such a close bond with Lovatt, he couldn’t stand living without her and died mere months after the relocation.
A reminder, if one was needed, that at the centre of even the most bizarre stories are real feelings. The kind that, as it turns out, don’t even have to be felt by humans to be completely legitimate.