no.5 - the thuggish pod

10 years ago I had the jarring experience of seeing dolphins up close for the first time. They were in a tank at Sea World and one paused at the window to appraise me with it's cold milky eye. This was not flipper, nor was it one of the hyper-intelligent beings described in the Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This was a cold creature spoiling for trouble.

Years before that encounter, I had the brief but exciting notion that I should become a marine biologist and learn to communicate with dolphins. But I was warned by a classmate named Jessica Auster-Levy not to believe the cuddly dolphin hype.

Jessica had worked with dolphins and she explained that while they were beautiful animals, they could be cranky, they could bite and, with their long muscular bodies that swim all day long, they can knock the holy piss out of you if they are so inclined.

Not so different from dogs, except for the swimming, but still there was a lingering fantasy about a secret intelligence much like our own, and there was hope for communication beyond my dog's "Feed-me, Walk-me, Pay-Attention-to-Me-Puh-Leeeez!" barks.

Now comes the ugly discovery that, indeed, they may be just like us.

They, too, kill for fun.

The U.K. Telegraph reports that gangs of dolphins off the coast of British Isles are murdering baby porpoises. They actually used the word murder and they link to video of a thuggish pod of dolphins pounding a baby porpoise to death, and then playing with it's mangled corpse.

This has been going on for quite some time, but nobody could believe it. Like a parent blinded by love, marine biologists kept making excuses, hoping to explain the behavior away.

They're competing for salmon.
They're protecting their pods.
They're accidentally swimming into that baby porpoise over and over again.

Now, I'm afraid, they've run out of excuses. They can't even find a motive, beyond the psychotic pleasure of battering a porpoise to death.

What happened out there in those waters? Did the dolphins finally tire of humans being unable to tell the difference between porpoise and dolphin? You'll be able to remember now. Porpoises are smaller and are less capable of defending themselves.

I am glad, now, that I did not pursue a career cetacean communication. Imagine spending twenty years trying to crack the code, and when you do, that milky-eyed, grin-faced dolphin punk looks up at you and says "Oi! piss off. My mates an' I got murder to do."