Love knows no age – and apparently for one woman, no kind.
Most people can remember a doubtful relationship from the twenty, but for Margaret Howe Lovatt she had to navigate through a dolphin named Peter who fell in love with her.
Lovatt's love story started in the mid-sixties, when the then 23-year-old volunteer work offered a project funded by NASA to try to communicate with the mammals on the Dolphin Point Laboratory on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas.
“I was curious,” Lovatt told, no Howe, to The Guardian in an interview from 2014 and described the center.
Lovatt remembered that he drove to the large white building where the laboratory was and director of the Laboratory Gregory Bateson, who introduced her to the animals and invited her to observe them.
Although he had no scientific training, Lovatt turned out to have some astute observations about the dolphins, in which Bateson invited her to come back whenever she wanted.
“There were three dolphins,” Lovatt recalled. 'Peter, Pamela and Sissy. Sissy was the biggest. Pushy, loudly, she has run a bit of the show. Pamela was very shy and anxious. And Peter was a young guy. He was sexually mature and a bit naughty. '
The lab was founded by neuroscientist Dr. John Lilly, who had published a quasi-sci-Fi book in 1961 that suggested The theory that dolphins wanted to communicate with people. He designed the lab with the intentions to enable people and dolphins to live in the vicinity.
Lovatt's love story started in the mid-sixties, when the then 23-year-old volunteer work offered a project funded by NASA to try to communicate with the mammals in the Dolphin Point Laboratory on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas
Lovatt was quickly digested by the project and spent more and more time in the lab with the water mammals.
Lilly had hoped to communicate with the beings and encourage them to make human -like sounds through their bladder holes through daily lessons.
However, she had the feeling that she did not make enough progress, instead decided to concentrate on Peter, so that the time spent one-on-one spent him.
Still not satisfied and the feeling had already spent her time with Peter in the facility, Lovatt moved to the lab in 1965.
She and Dr. Lilly founded an indoor aquarium in Dolphin Point where she and Peter could live together, so that she could work on learning him 24/7 English.
Peter and Lovatt exist six days of the week together in the lab and on the seventh day the dolphin would go back to the housing with Pamela and Sissy.
The experiment lasted three months, with Lovatt in detailed notes. In her memories of the experiment, Lovatt described that the dolphin was 'very, very interested' in her anatomy.
'If I sat here and my legs were in the water, he would come up and look at the back of my knee for a long time. He wanted to know how that thing worked and I was so charmed by it, “she remembered.
Lovatt said there are three dolphins Peter, Pamela and Sissy. Sissy was the biggest. Pushy, loudly, she has run a bit of the show. Pamela was very shy and anxious. And Peter was a young guy. He was sexually adult and a bit naughty, “Lovatt recalled
Lovatt had also started to notice the Peter, who was a sexually mature adolescent dolphin, was often excited during their sessions.
She also noticed that it was very difficult to try to learn to talk a dolphin when he gets excited.
Lovatt discovered that Peter 'would rub himself' on her knee, foot or hand – adding that she would allow him to do this.
“I wasn't uncomfortable – as long as it wasn't too rough,” she said for sure.
“It was just easier to record that and let it happen, it was very precious and very gentle, Peter was there, he knew I was there,” she added.
Peter was transported to the housing with the other dolphins to illuminate his sexual drives in the beginning, which is said to be quite difficult logistics.
The loss of time and difficult to move Peter led Lovatt to ultimately relieve Peter from his drives himself.
“It would just be part of what was going on, like an itch, just getting rid of that scratch and we would be ready and continue,” she explained.
While Lovatt said that nothing was sexual on her part, the story of her sexual encounters with Peter finally overshadowed the experiment, reinforced by an article in Hustler in the late 1970s.
The experiment came to an end in 1966, when Lilly, who was increasingly interested in LSD and its effects, began to dose themselves and the dolphins, which led to the end of the financing of the laboratory.
Unfortunately, Peter never recovered from Lovatt, who left the center, with Lilly Lovatt a few weeks after her departure to report that Peter died, which suggests that he had committed suicide by opening his blowhole under water.
Locatt stayed on St. Thomas and eventually married the photographer who worked on the project. They share four daughters and have converted the abandoned laboratory of Dolphin Point into a house for their family.
