Chapter I: Part 1

The Dolphin
in History

_Papers delivered by Ashley Montagu
and John C. Lilly at a symposium
at the Clark Library, 13 October 1962_

WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
_University of California, Los Angeles
1963_

_Foreword_

Recently the dolphin has become the focus of much scientific interest and investigation which have led to flattering pronouncements about its remarkable intelligence, amiability, and astonishing friendliness towards man. It was in consequence of such activities that a symposium was held at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library to consider the background to contemporary studies of the dolphin. The presentations of Dr. Ashley Montagu and Dr. John C. Lilly were received so favorably that it was decided to make them more widely available in the present form.

As will be readily apparent to any reader, Dr. Montagu has demonstrated conclusively that had the writings of the ancients been heeded we should long since have paid proper respect to this intelligent mammal, and Dr. Lilly has reinforced such classical appreciation by an account of his own astonishing observations of dolphin behavior. It is to be hoped that these two accounts will contribute to a lasting appreciation of our remarkable aquatic friend.

C.D. O’Malley

DIVISION OF MEDICAL HISTORY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

THE HISTORY OF THE DOLPHIN

_by_ Ashley Montagu

_The friendly_ Dolphin, _while within the maine,
At libertie delightes, to sport and play,
Himselfe is fresh, and doth no whit retaine
The brinish saltnes of the boundless Sea
Wherein he lives. Such is the secret skill
Of Nature working, all thinges at her will._
Henry Peacham, _Minerva Britanna_, 1612

_The History of the Dolphin_

By ASHLEY MONTAGU

_I have met with a story, which, although authenticated by undoubted
evidence, looks very like a fable._
_Pliny the Younger_

The history of the dolphin is one of the most fascinating and instructive in the historiography and the history of ideas in the western world. Indeed, it provides one of the most illuminating examples of what has probably occurred many times in human culture—a virtually complete loss of knowledge, at least in most segments of the culture, of what was formerly well understood by generations of men. “Not in entire forgetfulness” in some regions of the world, but certainly in “a sleep and a forgetting” in the most sophisticated centers of the western world.

Dolphins are mammals. They belong in the order Cetacea, suborder Odontoceti, family Delphinidae. Within the Delphinidae there are some twenty-two genera and about fifty-five species. The count includes the Killer Whale, the False Killer Whale, the White Whale, and the Pilot Whale, all of which are true dolphins. There are two subfamilies, the Delphinapterinae, consisting of the two genera _Monodon monocerus_, the Narwhal, and _Delphinapterus leucas_, the White Whale or Beluga. These two genera are distinguished by the fact that none of the neck vertebrae are fused, whereas in all remaining genera, embraced in the subfamily Delphininae, at least the first and second neck vertebrae are fused.

It was Aristotle in his _History of Animals_ (521b) who first classified whales, porpoises, and dolphins as Cetacea,τὰ κήτη οῖον δελφις καὶ φωκαὶνα καὶ φάλαινα. Aristotle’s account of the Cetacea was astonishingly accurately written, and quite evidently from firsthand knowledge of these animals.

While most dolphins are inhabitants of the seas, there are some that live in rivers, and quite a few that are denizens of fresh-water rivers removed many miles from the sea. With one exception the diet of dolphins is principally fish. The one exception is _Sotalia teuszii_, which lives in the Kamerun River, and is believed to feed exclusively on vegetable matter. The Ting Ling dolphin (_Lipotes vexillifer_) lives in Ting Ling Lake, six hundred miles up the Yang-tse-Kiang. Another dolphin, the Susu or Ganges dolphin (_Platanista gangetica_) of Brahmapootra, the Ganges, and the Indus, has lenseless eyes and is almost blind. The fresh-water dolphins belong in the family Platanistidae.

It is of interest to note that, in connection with the vegetable feeding habits of the Kamerun dolphin, Lycophron, in his _Alexandra_, makes his dolphins feed on trees, and Ovid, in the _Metamorphoses_ (III, 1, 202), describes a flood in which the dolphins take possession of the woods. Nonnus Panopolitanus, in the _Dionysiaca_ (VI, 265-266), also describes dolphins as feeding on trees.

The normal range of length of dolphins is from 5 to 14 feet; the larger species, the whales, are considerably longer. Brain weight is between 1600 and 1700 grams in the familiar dolphins, and reaches 9200 grams and more in the whales. The large brain is associated with what, all observers familiar with these animals agree, is a quite considerable intelligence.

Here we must pause to make a plea for the proper usage of common names. The term “porpoise” refers to the small, beakless Delphinidae, which have a triangular dorsal fin and spade-shaped teeth. The name “dolphin” embraces all other members of the family, except the larger forms, which are called whales. The porpoises mostly belong in the genus _Phocaena_, the best known species of which, the Common Porpoise (_Phocaena phocaena_), never reaches a length exceeding 6 feet and weighs 100 to 120 pounds. There are some six species. The finless black porpoise constitutes the only other genus with a single species _Neomeris phocaenoides_.

All porpoises are dolphins. The Bottle-Nosed Dolphin, _Tursiops truncatus_, is sometimes called a porpoise. This is incorrect. _Tursiops_ is a true dolphin, and should not be called what it is not.

Here we shall be principally concerned with the Bottle-Nosed Dolphin and with the Common Dolphin. The Bottle-Nosed Dolphin has a short, well-defined snout two or three inches long, and is characterized by a prominent fin in the middle of the back. Coloration is dark above and light below. Gestation lasts some ten months, birth is monotocous, and the young are suckled for about 18 months. The tail is delivered first, and the infant, about three feet long and weighing about twenty-five pounds, is immediately quite active, though much in need of the care of its devoted mother. The infant will eventually grow to be between 11 and 12 feet in length, and weigh about 300 kilograms. _Tursiops_ has an enormously wide range, being commonest along the Atlantic coast of America, from Maine to Florida, and occurs in the Bay of Biscay, in the Mediterranean Sea, and as far south as New Zealand.

The Common Dolphin, _Delphinus delphis_, is readily recognized by its well-defined narrow beak and distinctive coloration. The beak is some 5 to 6 inches narrower and finer than in the Bottle-Nosed Dolphin, and is sharply marked off by a deep V-shaped groove from the low reclining forehead. The Common Dolphin reaches a length up to 8½ feet. Its range of distribution is very wide, for it may be met in any temperate or warm sea throughout the world, and occurs at times in vast schools.

Whether the dolphin of classical antiquity is _Delphinus_ or _Tursiops_ is not usually determinable, although each undoubtedly played its independent role in the stories told of dolphins. From the recorded evidence available to us it is clear that, except for the larger species, the whales, all dolphins appear to be characterized by playfulness and friendliness toward man. There are, however, differences which appear to express themselves mostly in captivity. At least, _Tursiops_ adjusts much better to captivity than does _Delphinus_. At marine studios _Tursiops_ has established itself as a highly intelligent, playful, and friendly performer. _Delphinus_, on the other hand, while naturally all these things, in captivity tends to be timid and not very playful.

The Common and Bottle-Nosed Dolphins are those best known to the western world, but many of the traits which have recently been rediscovered concerning these creatures have been well known to other peoples for millennia. It is only a certain segment of the western world, its more sophisticated representation, and particularly the learned world, which dismissed as myths the tales told about dolphins in classical antiquity. And this is the real burden of the story I have to tell you. Some of these antique tales may have been myths, but as we shall see, many of them were not, and undoubtedly a number of the myths were based on real events partially embroidered by the imagination and improved, like good wine, by time. But good wine needs no bush, and I shall sample this wine as palatably as I find it.

The earliest representation of a dolphin I have been able to find is from a pictographic seal from Crete, estimated to date from 3500 to 2200 B.C. The earliest _painting_ of a dolphin thus far recovered is from the ancient Peloponnesian city of Tiryns. The date is about 1600 B.C. In that city it is also represented in stucco floors. Several good examples of dolphins are furnished by seventh century Corinthian art. The dolphin is also well represented in Minoan art. In Cyprus it is frequently represented in Late Helladic vases, shards, amphorae, in metalwork, engravings, and in stucco floors as at Tiryns. Among the importations from Crete into Helladic art appear to have been certain stylized forms of the dolphin.

An early literary reference to the dolphin occurs in Aesop’s fable, “The Monkey and the Dolphin.” During a violent storm a ship was capsized, and among those thrown into the water was a monkey. Observing its distress a dolphin came to its rescue, and taking the monkey upon its back the dolphin headed for shore. Opposite Piraeus, the harbor of Athens, the dolphin inquired of the monkey whether he was an Athenian. “Oh, yes,” replied the monkey, “and from one of the best families.” “Then you know Piraeus,” said the dolphin. “Very well, indeed,” said the monkey, “he is one of my most intimate friends.” Whereupon, outraged by so gross a deceit, the dolphin took a deep dive and left the monkey to its fate.

I take it that ever since that day monkeys have very sensibly refrained from speech. It is far better to remain silent even at the risk of being taken for a fool or a rogue, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

Aesop flourished about 600 B.C. His story suggests a considerable knowledge of the ways of dolphins, and this indicates that knowledge of the dolphin was already old in his time.

There are several variant Greek myths on the origin of the dolphin. All of them relate to Dionysos. In one version Dionysos is an adult, in another he is a child. The first group of legends represent the epiphany of Dionysos, symbolizing the battle between winter and summer. Winter is represented by the death of Dionysos who disappears into the water, from which he is brought back on the top of a dolphin as the returning springtime (Apollodorus, III, 5, 3). Another version has Dionysos, whether as child or adult varies, being conveyed by ship to Naxos by Tyrrhenian mariners. The latter conceive the idea of kidnaping him. Dionysos senses their treachery, and bidding his companions strike up on their musical instruments, he produces a Bacchic wild dance in the mariners who throw themselves overboard and are changed into dolphins.

The popular belief in antiquity in the human intelligence of dolphins and their kindly feeling toward man was explained by the ancient writers in the light of the transformation of the Tyrrhenian pirates into dolphins. (See Lucian, _Marine Dialogues_, 8; Oppian, _Halieutica_, I, 649-654, 1098, V, 422, 519f; Porphyry, _De Abstinentia_, III, 16.) As Oppian (I, 1089) in his _Halieutica_ has it, in William Diaper’s charming translation:

So _Dolphins_ teem, whom subject Fish revere,
And show the smiling Seas their Infant-Heir.
All other Kinds, whom Parent-Seas confine,
_Dolphins_ excell; that Race is all divine.
_Dolphins_ were Men (Tradition hands the Tale)
Laborious Swains bred on the _Tuscan_ Vale:
Transform’d by _Bacchus_, and by _Neptune_ lov’d,
They all the Pleasures of the Deep improv’d.
When new-made Fish the God’s Command obey’d,
Plung’d in the Waves, and untry’d Fins displayed,
No further Change relenting _Bacchus_ wrought,
Nor have the _Dolphins_ all the Man forgot;
The conscious Soul retains her former Thought.

The god of the golden trident who rules over the seas, Poseidon, would not have prospered in his wooing of Amphitrite if it had not been for the assistance of a dolphin, who apprized Poseidon of her hiding-place. For this service, as is well-known, Poseidon set the dolphin among the stars in the constellation which bears its name to this day.

It is interesting in this connection that in a modern Greek folktale from Zacynthos, Poseidon changes a hero who has fallen into the sea into a dolphin until such time as he should find a maiden ready to be his wife. After some time the dolphin rescues a shipwrecked king and his daughter, the princess by way of reward takes him for her husband, and the spell is broken (Bernhard Schmidt, _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen_, p. 135).

The cult of Apollo Delphinus was initiated, so legend has it, by Icadius who, leaving his native land of Lycia, which he had named for his mother, set out for Italy. Shipwrecked on the way, he was taken on the back of a dolphin, which set him down near Mount Parnassus, where he founded a temple to his father Apollo, and called the place Delphi after the dolphin. For this reason the dolphin became among the things most sacred to Apollo (Servius, _Commentarii in Vergilii Aeneidos_, III, 332; also Cornificius Longus, _De Etymis Deorum_).

Herodotos, writing of Periander (fl. 600 B.C.) tyrant of Corinth, tells one of the most famous of all stories of the dolphin (it is mentioned by Shakespeare in the first act of _Twelfth Night_). “In his time,” writes Herodotos (b. 484 B.C.), “a very wonderful thing is said to have happened. The Corinthians and the Lesbians agree in their account of the matter. They relate that Arion of Methymna, who, as a player on the lyre, was second to no man living at that time, and who was, so far as we know, the first to invent the dithyrambic measure, to give it its name, and to conduct in it at Corinth, was carried to Taenarum on the back of a dolphin.

“He had lived, it is said, at the court of Periander, when a longing came upon him to sail across to Italy and Sicily. Having made rich profits in those parts, he wanted to recross the seas to Corinth. He therefore hired a vessel, the crew of which were Corinthians, thinking that there was no people in whom he could more safely confide; and, going on board, he set sail from Tarentum. The sailors, however, when they reached the open sea, formed a plot to throw him overboard and seize upon his riches. Discovering their design, he fell on his knees, beseeching them to spare his life, and making them welcome to his money. But they refused; and required him either to kill himself outright, if he wished for a grave on the dry land, or without loss of time to leap overboard into the sea. In this strait Arion begged them, since such was their pleasure, to allow him to mount upon the quarter-deck, dressed in his full costume, and there to play and sing, and promising that, as soon as his song was ended, he would destroy himself. Delighted at the prospect of hearing the very best singer in the world, they consented, and withdrew from the stern to the middle of the vessel: while Arion dressed himself in the full costume of his calling, took his lyre, and standing on the quarter-deck, chanted the Orthian [a very high-pitched lively and spirited song]. His strain ended, he flung himself, fully attired as he was, headlong into the sea. The Corinthians then sailed on to Corinth. As for Arion, a dolphin, they say, took him upon his back and carried him to Taenarum, where he went ashore, and thence proceeded to Corinth in his musician’s dress, and told all that had happened to him. Periander, however, disbelieved the story, and put Arion in ward, to prevent his leaving Corinth, while he watched anxiously for the return of the mariners. On their arrival he summoned them before him and asked them if they could give him any tidings of Arion. They returned for answer that he was alive and in good health in Italy, and that they had left him at Tarentum, where he was doing well. Thereupon Arion appeared before them, just as he was when he jumped from the vessel: the men, astonished and detected in falsehood, could no longer deny their guilt. Such is the account which the Corinthians and Lesbians give; and there is to this day at Taenarum an offering of Arion’s at the shrine, which is a small figure in bronze, representing a man seated upon a dolphin.” (_The History of Herodotus_, Clio, I, 23-24.)

Commenting on this tale the poet Bianor, in _The Greek Anthology_ (_Declamatory Epigrams_, 308), remarks, “So the sea presumably contains fish whose righteousness exceeds that of mankind.”

Coins of Methymna, in Lesbos, Arion’s birthplace, show him riding a dolphin. In one form or another the dolphin is represented on the coins of some forty Greek cities, and doubtless most Greeks knew the reason why.

Pliny the Elder, in his _Natural History_ (IX, 8, 24-28), writes as follows:

“The dolphin is an animal that is not only friendly to mankind but is also a lover of music, and it can be charmed by singing in harmony, but particularly by the sound of the water-organ. It is not afraid of a human being as something strange to it, but comes to meet vessels at sea and sports and gambols round them, actually trying to race them and passing them even when under full sail. In the reign of the late lamented Augustus a dolphin that had been brought into the Lucrine Lake fell marvellously in love with a certain boy, a poor man’s son, who used to go from the Baiae district to school at Pozzuoli, because fairly often the lad when loitering about the place at noon called him to him by the name of Snubnose and coaxed him with bits of the bread he had with him for the journey,—I should be ashamed to tell the story were it not that it has been written about by Maecenas and Fabianus and Flavius Alfius and many others,—and when the boy called to it at whatever time of day, although it was concealed in hiding, it used to fly to him out of the depth, eat out of his hand, and let him mount on its back, sheathing as it were the prickles of its fin, and used to carry him when mounted right across the bay to Pozzuoli to school, bringing him back in similar manner, for several years, until the boy died of disease, and then it used to keep coming sorrowfully and like a mourner to the customary place, and itself also expired, quite undoubtedly from longing. Another dolphin in recent years at Hippo Diarrhytus on the coast of Africa similarly used to feed out of people’s hands and allow itself to be stroked, and play with swimmers and carry them on its back. The Governor of Africa, Flavianus, smeared it all over with perfume, and the novelty of the scent apparently put it to sleep: it floated lifelessly about, holding aloof from human intercourse for some months as if it had been driven away by insult; but afterwards it returned and was an object of wonder as before. The expense caused to their hosts by persons of official position who came to see it forced the people of Hippo to destroy it. Before these occurrences a similar story is told about a boy in the city of Iasus, with whom a dolphin was observed for a long time to be in love, and while eagerly following him to the shore when he was going away it grounded on the sand and expired; Alexander the Great made the boy head of the priesthood of Poseidon at Babylon, interpreting the dolphin’s affection as a sign of the deity’s favour. Hegesidemus writes that in the same city of Iasus another boy also, named Hermias, while riding across the sea in the same manner lost his life in the waves of a sudden storm, but was brought back to the shore, and the dolphin confessing itself the cause of his death did not return out to sea and expired on dry land. Theophrastus records that exactly the same thing occurred at Naupactos too. Indeed there are unlimited instances: the people of Amphilocus and Taranto tell the same stories about boys and dolphins; and these make it credible that also the skilled harper Arion, when at sea the sailors were getting ready to kill him with the intention of stealing the money he had made, succeeded in coaxing them to let him first play a turn on his harp, and the music attracted a school of dolphins, whereupon he dived into the sea and was taken up by one of them and carried ashore at Cape Matapan.”

A very similar but apparently quite independent account of these stories is given by the younger Pliny, in his _Letters_ (IX, 23).

The elder Pliny then goes on to tell of the manner in which dolphins assist fishermen, which corresponds closely with the accounts given by recent observers of this cooperative activity between fishermen and dolphins. (For accounts of these see Antony Alpers, _Dolphins_, 146 sq.)

There are numerous other stories similar to those given by the Plinys from classical antiquity, but it is quite impossible to recount them here.[1] What they all have in common is the friendliness of the dolphin for human beings, their rescue of them when they were thrown into the sea, their playfulness, especially with children, and their interest in almost any sort of sound. All these traits came to be regarded as mythical by later and more sophisticated ages, and Usener (_Die Sintfluthsagen_) comments on the effect that the prevalence of these tales had even upon the scientific thought of antiquity, making it difficult for such thinkers as Aristotle to get away from the belief in the dolphin’s ability to carry a rider, and in its capacity for human feeling (Aristotle, _History of Animals_, 631a). But Aristotle was right and Herr Usener wrong. The delightful thing about most of these myths is that they all appear to be based on solid fact, and not on the fancies attributed to the original narrators. Another typical modern gloss by a highly sophisticated writer, biologically not unknowledgeable, Norman Douglas, is the following: Commenting on the delphic mythology, he writes, “From these and many other sources, we may gather that there was supposed to exist an obscure but powerful bond of affection between this animal and humanity, and that it was endowed with a certain kindheartedness and man-loving propensity. This is obviously not the case; the dolphin cares no more about us than cares the haddock. What is the origin of this belief? I conjecture that the beast was credited with these social sentiments out of what may be called poetic reciprocation. Mankind, loving the merry gambols and other endearing characteristics of the dolphin, which has a playful trick of escorting vessels for its own amusement, whose presence signified fair weather, and whose parental attachment to its offspring won their esteem—quite apart from its fabled, perhaps real, love of music or at least of noisy sounds—were pleased to invest it with feelings akin to their own. They were fond of the dolphin; what more natural and becoming than that the dolphin should be fond of them?” (_Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology_, p. 161.)

But Douglas was undisillusionedly wrong, and the dolphins are right, and so is the “mankind” that believed in their friendliness. Though pleased to see the dolphins play, it is to be regretted that Douglas did not mind his compass and his way, for:

Had the curteous Dolphins heard
One note of his, they would have dar’d
To quit the waters, to enjoy
In banishment such melody.
John Hall, 1646.

In order to avoid any imputation that I may be attempting to play Euhemerus[2] to the dolphin’s tale, the facts may be allowed to speak for themselves—always remembering that facts never speak for themselves, but are at the mercy of their interpreters. All, then, that I am concerned to show here, by citing the contemporary evidence, is that, in essence, the so-called myths of the ancients were based on solid facts of observation and not, as has hitherto been supposed, on the imaginings of mythmakers.

Let us begin with a brief account of the most recent and most thoroughly documented story of a free-dwelling dolphin’s social interaction with human beings. This is the story of Opo, a female _Tursiops_ that made its appearance early in 1955 at Opononi, a small township just outside the mouth of Hokianga Harbour, on the western side of the North Island of New Zealand. From allowing itself at first to be rubbed with an oar or mop carried on the fishermen’s launches, it began to glide in near the beach among the bathers. The cheerful _putt-putt_ of a motor-launch or of an outboard motor was an irresistible attraction for Opo, and she would follow the boat like a dog, playing or cruising round it. If she had an urge to wander, starting up the motor would invariably draw her back again. Mr. Piwai Toi, a Maori farmer, who was the first to observe Opo, writes, “She was really and truly a children’s playmate. Although she played with grownups she was really at her charming best with a crowd of children swimming and wading. I have seen her swimming amongst children almost begging to be petted. She had an uncanny knack of finding out those who were gentle among her young admirers, and keeping away from the rougher elements. If they were all gentle then she would give of her best.” (Antony Alpers, _The Dolphin_, pp. 228-229.)

The child the dolphin favored was a thirteen-year-old girl named Jill Baker. At fourteen Jill wrote the following account of her experience with Opo:

“I think why the dolphin became so friendly with me was because I was always gentle with her and never rushed at her as so many bathers did. No matter how many went in the water playing with her, as soon as I went in for a swim she would leave all the others and go off side-by-side with me. I remember on one occasion I went for a swim much further up the beach than where she was playing, and I was only in the water a short while when she bobbed up just in front of my face and gave me such a fright. On several other occasions when I was standing in the water with my legs apart she would go between them and pick me up and carry me a short distance before dropping me again. At first she didn’t like the feel of my hands and would dart away, but after a while when she realized I would not harm her she would come up to me to be rubbed and patted. She would quite often let me put little children on her back for a moment or two.” (In Antony Alpers, _The Dolphin_, p. 229.)

Opo’s choice of the gentle Jill Baker for the rides which she gave this thirteen-year-old, suggests not only a sensitive discrimination of the qualities of human beings, but also that the reports of similar incidents which have come down to us from antiquity were based on similarly observed events. The one element in these stories which seemed most difficult to accept, and which is so often represented in ancient art, the boy riding on the back of a dolphin, is now removed from the realm of fancy and placed squarely in the realm of fact. It has been corroborated and sustained.

Mr. Antony Alpers in his book on the dolphin, and especially that part devoted to the eyewitness accounts of Opo’s behavior, goes far toward establishing the fact of the dolphin’s remarkable capacity for rapport with human beings. But for those striking facts I must recommend you to Mr. Alper’s charming book.

The dolphin’s extraordinary interest in and, what we will I am sure not be far wrong in interpreting as, concern for human beings, is dramatically told by George Llano in his report _Airmen Against the Sea_. This report, written on survival at sea during the Second World War, records the experience of six American airmen, shot down over the Pacific, who found themselves in a seven-man raft being pushed by a porpoise toward land. Unfortunately the land was an island held by the Japanese. The friendly porpoise must have been surprised and hurt when he found himself being dissuaded from his pushing by being beaten off with the oars of the airmen.

Dr. Llano also reports that “Most observers noted that when porpoises appeared sharks disappeared, and they frequently refer to the ‘welcome’ appearance of porpoises, whose company they preferred to that of sharks.” This confirms all earlier reports that sharks are no match for the dolphin kind.

Dolphins have been known to push a mattress quite empty of human beings for considerable distances at sea. Possibly it is merely the pushing that interests them, and not the saving of any human beings that might be atop of them.

Is there any evidence that dolphins save drowning swimmers? There is.

In 1945 the wife of a well-known trial attorney residing in Florida was saved from drowning by a dolphin.[3] This woman had stepped into a sea with a strong undertow and was immediately dragged under. Just before losing consciousness, she remembers hoping that someone would push her ashore. “With that, someone gave me a tremendous shove, and I landed on the beach, face down, too exhausted to turn over ... when I did, no one was near, but in the water almost eighteen feet out a porpoise was leaping around, and a few feet beyond him another large fish was also leaping.”

In this case the porpoise was almost certainly a dolphin and the large fish a fishtail shark. A man who had observed the events from the other side of a fence told the rescued woman that this was the second time he had seen a drowning person saved by a “porpoise.”

More recently, on the night of February 29, 1960, Mrs. Yvonne M. Bliss of Stuart fell from a boat off the east coast of Grand Bahama Island in the West Indies.[4] “After floating, swimming, shedding more clothing for what seemed an eternity, I saw a form in the water to the left of me.... It touched the side of my hip and, thinking it must be a shark, I moved over to the right to try to get away from it.... This change in my position was to my advantage as heretofore I was bucking a cross tide and the waves would wash over my head and I would swallow a great deal of water. This sea animal which I knew by this time must be a porpoise had guided me so that I was being carried with the tide.

“After another eternity and being thankful that my friend was keeping away the sharks and barracuda for which these waters are famous, the porpoise moved back of me and came around to my right side. I moved over to give room to my companion and later knew that had not the porpoise done this, I would have been going downstream to deeper and faster moving waters. The porpoise had guided me to the section where the water was the most shallow.

“Shortly I touched what felt like fish netting to my feet. It was seaweed and under that the glorious and most welcome bottom.

“As I turned toward shore, stumbling, losing balance, and saying a prayer of thanks, my rescuer took off like a streak on down the channel.”

The reader must be left to make what he can of such occurrences. Dr. George G. Goodwin of the American Museum of Natural History doubts the intention of dolphins to save drowning persons.[5] “Anything floating,” he writes, “on or near the surface of the sea will attract his attention. His first action on approaching the object of his curiosity is to roll under it. In doing so, something partly submerged, like the body of a drowning person, is nudged to the surface of the water. The sea does its part and automatically drives floating objects toward the beach.” This may well be so in some cases, but it is an explanation which does not fit the incidents described by Mrs. Bliss, in which she was not pushed but guided. Occam’s razor should not be too bluntly applied.

The cooperativeness of dolphins with fishermen in various parts of the world has gone on for several thousand years without its significance having registered much upon the consciousness of the rest of the world—including the learned and the scientific.

In the Mediterranean from the earliest days, as recorded by Aelian in his _On the Characteristics of Animals_, VI, 15, to the present day, torchlight fishing with the aid of dolphins has been a traditional way of fishing. This has been described by Nicholas Apostolides in his book _La Pêche en Grèce_, who tells how fishermen of the Sporades catch their garfish “in the darkest nights of the month of October” by methods very similar to those described by Aelian. Briefly, the fish attracted by the fishermen’s flares begin to collect, whereupon the dolphins appear and drive them into the fishermen’s nets.

Similar methods of fishing were practiced in the Antipodes, off the New Zealand and Queensland coasts. The aborigines of Moreton Bay, Queensland, used to catch mullet with the aid of dolphins, at a place appropriately enough called Amity Point. The aborigines recognized individual dolphins and called them by name. With their nets ready on the beach the aborigines waited for a shoal of fish to appear, whereupon they would run down and make a peculiar splashing in the water with their spears, and the dolphins on the outside of the shoal would drive the fish towards the nets for the aborigines to catch. Fairholme, who described these events in 1856, writes, “For my part I cannot doubt that the understanding is real, and that the natives know these porpoises [actually the dolphin _Tursiops catalania_], and that strange porpoises would not show so little fear of the natives. The oldest men of the tribe say that the same kind of fishing has always been carried on as long as they can remember. Porpoises abound in the bay, but in no other part do the natives fish with their assistance.”

The Irrawaddy River dolphin is also an assistant-fisherman. John Anderson reports that “The fishermen believe that the dolphin purposely draws fish to their nets, and each fishing village has its particular guardian dolphin which receives a name common to all the fellows of his school; and it is this superstition which makes it so difficult to obtain specimens of this Cetacean. Colonel Sladen has told me that suits are not infrequently brought into the native courts to recover a share in the capture of fish, in which a plaintiff’s dolphin has been held to fill the nets of rival fishermen.” (John Anderson, _Account of the Zoological Results of Two Expeditions to Western Yunnan_.)

The Pink-Bellied river dolphin (_Inia geoffrensis_) of the Trapajós, a tributary of the Amazon, also helps its human friends with fishing. Dr. F. Bruce Lamb[6] says that this dolphin, locally known as the _boto_, “is reported to have saved the lives of helpless persons whose boats have capsized, by pushing them ashore. None of the dreaded flesh-eating _piranhas_ appear when a porpoise is present, for they themselves would be eaten.” And he goes on to give an eye-witness account of fishing with the aid of a trained dolphin. “My curiosity was aroused,” he writes, “by the paddler, who began tapping on the side of the canoe with his paddle between strokes and whistling a peculiar call. Asking Rymundo about this, he startled me by casually remarking that they were calling their _boto_, their porpoise.... As we approached the fishing grounds near the riverbank, Rymundo lit his carbide miner’s lamp, adjusted the reflector, chose his first harpoon, and stood up in the bow ready for action. Almost immediately on the offshore side of the canoe about 50 feet from us we heard a porpoise come up to blow and take in fresh air.” The porpoise then chased the fish toward the canoe and Rymundo harpooned them with ease.

Many ancient writers have referred to the brilliancy of the changeful colors when the dolphin is dying. Byron makes reference to this in “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,”

“Parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour as it gasps away;
The last still loveliest, till ’tis gone, and
all is gray.”

Here is a peculiar confusion, for this is not the mammalian dolphin of which we have been speaking, but the swift piscivorous oceanic fish _Coryphaena hippurus_, the dolphin of sailors. It is blue with deeper spots, and gleaming with gold. It is, indeed, famous for the beauty of its changing colors when dying. The mammalian dolphin exhibits no such spectacular color changes when dying.

Happily, it is not with dying dolphins or with _their_ changing colors that we are concerned here, but rather with ours, the changing color of the complexion of our once too sophisticated beliefs. Beliefs which, in their own way, were very much more in the nature of myths than the ancient ones which we wrote off a little too disdainfully as such. The history of the dolphin constitutes an illuminating example of the eclipse of knowledge once possessed by the learned, but which was virtually completely relegated to the outermost fringes of mythology during the last eighteen hundred years. Perhaps there is a moral to be drawn here. If so, I shall leave it to others to draw. But now that scientific interest in the dolphin has been aroused we are entering into a new era of delphinology, and with the confirmation of so many of the observations of the ancients already made, we may look forward with confidence to others. Dolphins have large brains; possibly they will some day be able to teach us what brains are really for.

_Appendix A_
A Note for Bibliophiles

It was an ancient belief, as Camerarius tells us, that “when tempests arise, and seamen cast their anchor, the dolphin, from its love to man, twines itself round it, so that it may more safely lay hold of the ground.” I know of no verifying evidence for this statement, but should not be surprised to find some element of truth in it. The dolphin twined about an anchor is the device which Aldus Manutius (1450-1515) adopted for his Aldine Press, which began publication in 1494. This device was later adapted to his own use by the English publisher William Pickering (1796-1854).

The representation of the dolphin twined about the anchor refers to no maritime supremacy of that creature, but rather to its kindly regard for man. The following poem in George Wither’s _A Collection of Emblemes_ (1635), throws some additional light on the meaning of the emblem.

If Safely, thou desire to goe,
Bee nor too Swift, nor overslow.
[Emblem]
[Dolphin and Anchor]
Illvstr.X. Book 2.

Our Elders, when their meaning was to shew
A native-speedinesse (in Emblem wise)
The picture of a Dolphin-Fish they drew;
Which, through the waters, with great swiftnesse, flies.
An Anchor, they did figure, to declare
Hope, stayednesse, or a grave-deliberation:
And therefore when those two, united are,
Its giveth us a two-fold Intimation.
For, as the Dolphin putteth us in minde,
That in the Courses, which we have to make,
Wee should not be, to slothfulnesse enclin’d;
But, swift to follow what we undertake:
So, by an Anchor added thereunto,
Inform’d wee are, that, to maintaine our speed,
Hope, must bee joyn’d therewith (in all we doe)
If wee will undiscouraged proceed.
It sheweth (also) that, our speedinesse,
Must have some staydnesse; lest, when wee suppose
To prosecute our aymes with good successe,
Wee may, by Rashnesse, good endeavors lose.
They worke, with most securitie, that know
The Times, and best Occasions of delay;
When, likewise, to be neither swift, nor slow;
And, when to practise all the speed, they may.
For, whether calme, or stormie-passages,
(Through this life’s Ocean) shall their Bark attend;
This double Vertue, will procure their ease:
And, them, in all necessities, befriend.
By Speedinesse, our works are timely wrought;
By Staydnesse, they, to passe are, safely, brought.
_From_ A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne, by George Wither.
London, 1635. Book 2, p. 72.

_Appendix B_
Dolphins and Their Distribution

Order: CETACEA
Suborder: ODONTOCETI
Family: Delphinidae
Subfamily: Delphininae
Genus: _Delphinus_
Subfamily: Delphinapterinae
Genus: _Monodon_
Genus: _Delphinapterus_

The Suborder Odontoceti of the Order Cetacea consists of the toothed whales, in contrast to the toothless whalebone or baleen whales, the Mystacoceti. The whales are large dolphins or one may say that dolphins are small whales. The members of the Odontoceti are the Dolphin, Freshwater Dolphin, Porpoise, Sperm Whale or Cachalot, Lesser Sperm Whale, Bottle-Nose Whale, Narwhal or Sea-Unicorn, White Whale, Pilot Whale or Black-Fish, Killer Whale or Grampus.

_Delphinus delphis_: The Common Dolphin. It is easily recognized by its well-defined narrow beak and distinctive coloration, being darker above than below. There is a narrow beak, which is sharply marked off from the low reclining forehead by a V-shaped groove. A length of up to 8½ feet has been recorded. Range of distribution is very wide. May be met in any temperate or warm sea throughout the world, and occurs at times in vast schools.

_Delphinus roseiventris_: The Red-Bellied Dolphin. Moluccas and Torres Straits, Australia; 3 feet 10 inches.

_Prodelphinus attenuatus_: Tropical and sub-tropical parts of Atlantic Ocean; 6 feet.

_P. plagiodon_: Atlantic coast of North America from Cape Hatteras, Gulf of Mexico; 7 feet.

_P. froenatus_: The Bridled Dolphin. Atlantic and Indian Oceans; about 6 feet.

_P. malayanus_: East Indies; more than 6 feet.

_P. coeruleoalbus_: South America, near mouth of River Plate; about 4 feet.

_P. euphrosyne_: Atlantic Ocean to South Africa; about 8 feet.

Genus _Tursiops_

_T. truncatus_: The Bottle-Nosed Dolphin. Has a short well-defined snout 2 or 3 inches long. There is a prominent fin in the middle of the back. Reaches a length of 11 to 12 feet. Has a very wide range. Commonest along the Atlantic coast of America from Maine to Florida. Found in Bay of Biscay, in the Mediterranean Sea, and in New Zealand waters.

_T. abusalam_: Red Sea; 6 feet.

_T. catalania_: Indian and Australian seas.

Genus _Steno_

_S. rostratus_: The Rough-Toothed Dolphin. Long-beaked, with roughened or furrowed teeth. Atlantic and Indian Oceans; about 8 feet.

Genus _Orcaella_

_O. brevirostris_: Irrawaddy River Dolphin. From Bay of Bengal, Vizagapatam, Singapore, and Siam (i.e., S.E. Asia).

Genus _Lissodelphis_ or _Tursio_

_Lissodelphis_: The Right Whale Dolphin. All oceans.

Genus _Grampus_

_G. griseus_: Risso’s Dolphin. North Atlantic, Mediterranean, New Zealand, and Cape of Good Hope; 12 to 13 feet.

Genus _Cephalorhynchus_

These are the Southern, mostly cold-water dolphins.

_C. heavisidei_: Heaviside’s Dolphin. Cape of Good Hope; about 4 feet.

_C. hectori_: Hector’s Dolphin. New Zealand; about 6 feet.

_C. albiventris_: White-Bellied Dolphin. A very rare form, found off the coast of South America; about 4 feet 6 inches.

_C. commersonii_: Commerson’s Dolphin; also known as the Piebald Porpoise or Le Jacobite. Southern oceans; up to 5¼ feet.

Genus _Lagenorhynchus_

Characterized by great number of vertebrae (80 to 90), great length of transverse and vertical bony processes from vertebrae, moderately pointed high back fin having concave posterior border; the beak is short.

_L. acutus_: The White-Sided Dolphin. North Atlantic; about 9 feet.

_L. australis_: Peale’s Porpoise. Cape Horn, Chile, Patagonia, Falkland Islands; over 7 feet.

_L. albirostris_: The White-Beaked Dolphin. North Atlantic; 9 to 10 feet.

_L. cruciger_: South Pacific; 5 to 6 feet.

_L. fitzroyi_: Fitzroy’s Dolphin. Southern end of South America; 5 feet 4 inches.

_L. obscurus_: Dusky Dolphin. South Africa, New Zealand, Falkland Islands; 7 feet.

Genus _Sotalia_

Concentrated in the tropical seas or rivers of South America, Africa, India, and the Far East.

_S. pallida_: Buffeo blanco. Upper Amazon; 5 feet 6 inches.

_S. fluviatalis_: Buffeo negro. Upper Amazon; 3 feet 7 inches.

_S. tucuxi_: Upper Amazon.

_S. guianensis_: N. E. coast of South America.

_S. teuszii_: Noteworthy as being the one Cetacean believed to feed exclusively on vegetable matter. Kamerun River.

_S. gadamu_: Vizagapatam; averages 7 feet; snout 6 inches.

_S. lentigiosa_: Vizagapatam.

_S. plumbea_: Malabar coast of India; about 8 feet; very long snout.

_S. borneensis_: Gulf of Siam to Sarawak in Borneo.

_S. sinesis_: Chinese White Dolphin.

The Fresh Water Dolphins.

Genus _Platanista_

_P. gangetica_: The Susu or Gangetic Dolphin; about 8 feet; snout and beak drawn into long forceps-like beak, 7 or 8 inches long; confined to River Ganges and River Indus. It is almost blind.

Genus _Inia_

_I. geoffrensis_: Amazonian Dolphin or Boutu. Upper Amazon; 7 feet; long beak.

Genus _Pontoporia_

_P. blainvillei_: La Plata Dolphin. Estuary of Rio de la Plata; about 5 feet.

Genus _Lipotes_

_L. vexillifer_: Chinese River Dolphin. Ting Ling Lake, 600 miles up the Yang-tse River; 7 feet 6 inches; slightly upcurved jaws.

The Porpoise

The small beakless Delphinidae, which have a triangular dorsal fin and spade-shaped teeth, black above and white below; travels in large schools. The word “porpoise” is derived from the French _porc-poisson_, “pig-fish.” Never larger than 6 feet.

Genus _Phocaena_

_P. phocaena_: The Common Porpoise. Chiefly North Atlantic and North Pacific; never larger than 6 feet.

_P. spinipinnis_: Burmeister’s Porpoise. Rare. La Plata round Horn to Peru.

_P. dalli_: Dall’s Harbor Porpoise. Very rare. Alaska; less than 5 feet.

_P. truei_: True’s Porpoise. Japan; less than 5 feet.

_P. dioprica_: River Plate to South Georgia.

Genus _Neomeris_

_N. phocaenoides_: Finless Black Porpoise. Cape of Good Hope to Japan.

Genus _Lissodelphis_

_L. peronii_: New Zealand and Tasmania; about 6 feet.

_L. brealis_: North Pacific; about 8 feet.

The Right Whale Dolphins

The Whales with Teeth

The toothed whales are big dolphins, and are on the average much smaller than the Whalebone or Baleen toothless Whales.

Family Physeteridae

Subfamily Physeterinae

Genus _Physeter_

_P. catodon_: The Sperm Whale or Cachalot. All oceans. Male may reach 60 feet, the female usually half the length of the male. This is the whale that has suffered the relentless persecution of whalers, always a coveted prize on account of its spermaceti-permeated blubber, and its excretory ambergris. The most dangerous of whales.

Subfamily Kogiinae

Genus _Kogia_

_K. breviceps_: The Pigmy or Lesser Sperm Whale. Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Antarctic oceans; about 10 feet.

Family Ziphiidae

Genus: _Hyperoödon rostratus_: The Bottle-Nose Whale. North Atlantic, Mediterranean, South Pacific, and Antarctic; 20 to 30 feet.

Genus: _Mesoplodon_: “The Cow Fish;” Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.

Genus: _Ziphius_: The Two-Toothed Whale. All oceans.

Genus: _Tasmacetus_: South Pacific.

Genus: _Berardius_: Pacific.

Family Monodontidae or Delphinapteridae

Subfamily Delphinapterinae

Genus: _Monodon monocerus_: Narwhal or Sea Unicorn. Arctic seas south of the ice-field. The male is characterized by an immense tusk, sometimes 9 feet long, projecting like a spear from the left side of the bluntly-rounded muzzle. The tusk is spirally grooved, and is the source of the horn of the unicorn of heraldry. Mottled in color, and about 18 feet long.

Genus: _Delphinapterus leucas_: The White Whale or Beluga. Resembles the Narwhal in size, shape, and habitat, but the tusk is absent.

Family Delphinidae

Genus _Globiocephala_

_G. melas_: Pilot Whale or Black-Fish or Ca’ing Whale. Temperate or tropical seas. Rounded head with dorsal fin. Takes its name from the fact that one whale or pilot leads the way of the sometimes huge schools; about 25 feet.

Genus _Orcinus_

_O. orca_: Killer Whale or Grampus. All seas. With a high dorsal fin and black and white coloring, aggressively bold and carnivorous, with singular cunning and intelligence. Fourteen seals and thirteen porpoises have been found in the stomach of a male measuring 21 feet. The male is usually about 30 feet in length.

Genus _Pseudorca_

_P. crassidens_: The False Killer Whale or Lesser Killer Whale. All seas.

FOOTNOTES

[1]Among the many well-known figures of classical mythology said to have
been saved by dolphins from the sea are Eikadios, Enalos, Koiranos,
Phalanthos, Taras, etc. In many other cases the corpses were brought
ashore by a dolphin, which then expired on reaching land (similarly,
with minor variations, was this so with Palaimon or Melikertes,
Dionysios and Hermias of Iasos, Hesiod, and the boys already
referred to from Baiae and Naupaktos). Similar incidents reappear in
the writings of the hagiographers. Saints Martinianos of Kaisareia,
Kallistratos of Carthage, Basileios the younger of Constantinople,
were each saved from a watery grave by a couple of dolphins. The
corpse of Saint Loukianos of Antioch was brought ashore by a large
dolphin, which then expired on the sand. See Klement, _Arion_, 1-64,
and Usener, _Die Sintfluthsagen_, 138-180.

[2]Euhemerus (_circa_ second half of the fourth century B.C.) attempted
a rationalistic explanation of the mythology prevailing in his time.
The theory he propounded, in his novel of travel, _Sacred History_,
was simply an extension of the current skeptical-scientific attitude
to matters which until that time had been accepted without question.
That theory was that the gods were merely men who because of their
great exploits or beneficence had been accorded divine honors. In
Crete, coming upon the remains of a tomb bearing the name of Zeus,
Euhemerus argued that even Zeus had probably been no more than a
great conqueror, who died and was buried in Crete, and afterwards
deified. This creditable anthropological attempt to historicize
mythology, though it failed to convince, is nevertheless worthy of
great respect. As A. B. Cook wrote, if Euhemerus said that Zeus was
a Cretan king when he ought to have said that Cretan kings played
the part of Zeus, it is a pardonable error. (_Zeus_, I, 662.)

[3]“Saved by a Porpoise,” _Natural History_, LVIII (1949), 385-386.

[4]Winthrop N. Kellogg, _Porpoises and Sonar_, University of Chicago
Press, 1962, p. 14.

[5]George G. Goodwin, “Porpoise—Friend of Man?” _Natural History_, LVI
(1947), 337.

[6]F. Bruce Lamb, “The Fisherman’s Porpoise,” _Natural History_, LXIII
(1954), 231-2.

REFERENCES

Aelian. _On the Characteristics of Animals._ Bk. VI, 15.
Aesop. _Fables._ “The Monkey and the Dolphin.”
Alpers, Antony. _Dolphins: the Myth and the Mammal._ Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1961.
Anderson, John. _Anatomical and Zoological Researches: Comprising an
Account of the Zoological Results of the Two Expeditions to
Western Yunnan._ London: Bernard Quaritch, 1878.
Apollodorus. _The Library._ III, 5, 3.
Apostolides, Nicholas. _La Pêche en Grèce._ Athens, 1907.
Aristotle. _History of Animals._ Bk. I, 5; II, 1, 13, 15; III, 1, 7,
20; IV, 8-10; V, 5; VI, 12; VIII, 2, 13; IX, 48.
Biedermann, Paul. _Der Delphin in der dichtenden und bildenden
Phantasie der Griechen und Roemer._ Halle, 1881.
Cook, Arthur B. _Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion._ Cambridge, Eng.:
The University Press, 1914, vol. 1, p. 662.
Douglas, Norman. _Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology._ London:
Chapman and Hall, 1928, p. 161.
Euhemerus. _Sacred History._
Fairholme, J. K. E. “The Blacks of Moreton Bay, and the Porpoises,”
_Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London_, XXIV
(1856), 353-354.
Goodwin, George G. “Porpoise—Friend of Man?” _Natural History_, LVI
(1947), 337.
_The Greek Anthology._
Herodotos. _History._ Clio I, 23-24.
Hill, Ralph N. _Window in the Sea._ New York: Rinehart, 1956.
Kellogg, Winthrop N. _Porpoises and Sonar._ Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1961.
Klement, Carl. _Arion._ Vienna, 1898.
Lamb, F. Bruce. “The Fisherman’s Porpoise,” _Natural History_, LXIII
(1954), 231-232.
Llano, George A. _Airmen Against the Sea._ Maxwell Air Force Base,
Alabama; Arctic, Desert, Tropic Information Center [1955 or
1956], p. 74.
Longman, Heber. “New Records of Cetacea,” _Memoirs of the Queensland
Museum_, VIII (1926), 266-278.
Longus, Cornificius. _De Etymis Deorum._
Lucian. _Marine Dialogues._ 8.
Lycophron. _Alexandra._
Nonnus Panopolitanus. _Dionysiaca._ VI, 265-266.
Norman, John R., and Fraser, F. C. _Giant Fishes, Whales, and
Dolphins._ London: Putnam, 1937.
Oppian. _Halieutica._ I, 649-654, 1089; V, 422, 519f.
Ovid. _Metamorphoses._ III, 1, 202.
Pliny the Elder. _Natural History._ IX, 8, 24-28.
Pliny the Younger. _Letters._ IX, 23.
Plutarch. _On the Cleverness of Animals._
Porphyry. _De Abstinentia._ III, 16.
Rabinovitch, Melitta. _Der Delphin in Sage und Mythos der Griechen._
Dornach: Hybernia-Verlag, 1947.
“Saved by a Porpoise,” _Natural History_, LVIII (1949), 385-386.
Schmidt, Bernhard. _Das Volksleben der Neugriechen._ Leipzig, 1871.
Servius. _Commentarii in Vergilii Aeneidos._ III, 332.
Stebbins, Eunice B. _The Dolphin in the Literature and Art of Greece
and Rome._ Menasha, Wisconsin: Banta Publishing Co., 1929.
Usener, Hermann. _Die Sintfluthsagen._ Bonn: F. Cohen, 1899.
Xenophon. _Anabasis._ V, 4, 28.

_Modern Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises, as Challenges to Our
Intelligence_

By JOHN C. LILLY

The intelligence of whales has been the subject of speculation by writers since Ancient Greece.[1][2] The discovery of the large brains of the Cetacea in the eighteenth century led to inevitable comparisons of these brains to those of the humans and of the lower primates. The winds of scholarly opinions concerning the whales have anciently blown strongly for high intelligence but during later centuries shifted strongly against high intelligence. At the time of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) the dolphin, for example, was held in high esteem, and many stories of the apparently great abilities of these animals were current.[2] By the time of Plinius Secundus (A.D. 23-79) the beginning of a note of skepticism was introduced. Plinius said, “I should be ashamed to tell the story were it not that it has been written about by ... others.”[1]