The true love story of a dolphin and a young girl, the shocking act of being separated makes everyone stunned
An experiment carried out in the 1960s happened in a way that was strange and beyond the imagination of all who planned it. That year, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sponsored an experiment to teach dolphins to understand and imitate human voices. The long-term aim of this experiment is to use dolphin learning to figure out how to help humans talk to "aliens" if they really exist.
To serve this experiment, a large complex named "dolphin house" was officially built and established. The 6-year-old dolphin Peter is taught by a girl named Margaret Howe , a 23-year-old research assistant. They had 10 weeks to complete their experiment.
Peter and Margaret first met when the experiment to teach English to dolphins took place.
All that time, Margaret was almost in the water with Peter except for the times when she had to go ashore to take a nap, shower, and rest. The human and fish pair lived, ate, slept and played together as Margaret tried to teach Peter how to imitate human voices.
The person supervising the experiment was Dr. John C Lilly, from Dolphin Point Laboratory, on St Thomas Island in the Caribbean. He predicts that dolphins will be able to imitate human voices in the next 10 to 20 years, from the time the experiment was conducted.
However, beyond his or anyone's expectations, between the dolphin Peter and the girl Margaret develop a strange reaction. No one can believe this, but Peter seems to have developed a love for his teacher, even a particularly deep affection .
They lived together for 10 weeks.
After 4 weeks of training, Margaret discovered that Peter began to enjoy being around her, having flirtatious behaviors of a male dolphin for females such as touching and rubbing Margaret's legs.
When the animal's love reaction was too obvious, Margaret had to agree to let Peter focus on completing the experiment. Many times, Margaret insists all her decisions are to serve the purpose of the experiment and not to satisfy personal lust even though to her, Peter is a special and lovely animal.
Peter begins to develop feelings for Margaret at week 4.
"Relationships have gone from being obligated to be together to enjoying being together and wanting to be together. I miss Peter when I'm not with him," Margaret shared in a 2014 BBC documentary. .
"He knows I'm there, and he's there too. Certainly for Peter the relationship is sexual, for me of course not, but the experience is a very sensitive one." Peter knows even "jealousy" when he sees "his girl" chatting with other people. Despite being kept with two other female dolphins, there was no relationship between them, and Peter was indifferent to females of the same species.
Peter sleeps right next to Margaret's suspended bed, the two watch TV together, the animal even begins to form some human sounds, especially the word " ball" .
Peter slept right next to Margaret's suspended bed.
Until the funding of the experiment gradually ran out and the relationship between the "teacher and the dolphin" reached the point of closeness, the dolphin house was forced to close. The dolphin Peter was transferred to a smaller laboratory in Florida, USA and completely separated from Margaret. In the first days after this change, Peter showed extreme pain. A few weeks passed, and when he was so desperate, Peter. committed suicide .
"Dr John called me and said that Peter committed suicide," Margaret told The Guardian . Experts at the Florida laboratory said that Peter died because he could not meet the person he loved.
Mrs. Margaret in the BBC documentary in 2014.
"The other girl can get through it, but Peter can't , " they said. According to Ric O'Barry, a researcher from an animal rights organization, Peter's death was an act of "suicide" by dolphins . "Dolphins are not self-breathers like humans," he explains. "Every breath they take is a controlled effort. If major changes are encountered, the dolphins just need to take a breath and sink to the bottom of the tank on their own. . They don't come up to breathe the next time."
So, that year's experiment failed to get dolphins to learn English, but gave researchers insight into the strong emotions of animals, especially dolphins.
The animal was later transferred to Florida and separated from its "lover" ever since.
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