Deadly Dolphins

photo source

"It was almost like they said: 'We're done playing with it, here you go'."

We all have become aware, during some point in our lives, somewhere between attending Seaworld in Queensland at twelve years old and becoming allies with the internet, that the innocent creature that we call a ‘dolphin’ is not as innocent as it seems – in fact, these creatures of the sea that you or someone you know has been photographed swimming with, can defeat ravenous sharks, defying a horrible fate of getting shredded by three sets of sharp teeth.

In fact, in a study by Mark Cotter, an Okeanis member, it was found that sexually frustrated male dolphins are more likely to kill for relief rather than for food. Porpoises, strange dolphin-like creatures with no nozzles, are the victims in these situations. While they swim around innocently, existing in seas and trying not to become extinct because of sexually frustrated distant relatives, they have become carcasses and play-toys. The dolphins in this particular study had chased the porpoises, viciously rammed into them, and had drowned them. In one crazy attack, seven dolphins ganged up on a porpoise, rammed it to death, and two were left behind playing with its carcass before offering it to the boat that Mark Cotter was on.

Twenty-one of the twenty-three attacking dolphins were male, which seemed to have played a substantial part in this killing spree mystery. Apparently, there is too much competition in the dolphin world, so to relieve their frustration, young male dolphins take on ganging up on porpoises. Perhaps dolphins have been eavesdropping on the subliminal messages found in rap music blaring on the boats of wealthy young men on hot summer nights. Perhaps one dolphin began a new trend, wherein being a dolphin gangster was cool, and perhaps that particular dolphin had a cousin who was a porpoise, and that porpoise had said that that idea was silly, so that dolphin rammed into him until he drowned, and began another new trend – silencing all porpoises in commemoration of that one porpoise that was silenced.

Perhaps whilst boating, a young man had taken with him and dropped by accident an issue of Playboy Magazine into the ocean, which had opened up the centerfold and was caught in a passing dolphin’s face, which inevitably led to the dolphin becoming overexcited, and upon looking for a rowdy female to share his excitement with, he was disappointed to find that the females were more interested in the older dolphins who were aroused by her and not human centrefolds, so that dolphin became very upset but was still excited, and his excitement turned into frustration and he beat up a porpoise who just so happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and in tradition, whenever young male dolphins feel sexually frustrated that was a decent thing to do.

While all of this is possible, though highly unlikely, it may be that maybe dolphins in general have a hatred for porpoises. Perhaps porpoises had teased dolphins for having a ‘bottlenose’, and dolphins have felt self-conscious about it ever since, to the extent that they ram into any porpoise on sight. Maybe porpoises are evil creatures that appear innocent only because they are getting massacred. Maybe us humans are interpreting the observations of these murders in the wrong way – maybe the porpoises taunt the dolphins, and the murderous dolphins just happened to be males because the females are too scared to deal with killing another living thing.

Dolphins are simply strange creatures. Though they appear fun, friendly and inviting, so do large beaten down vans with ‘free candy’ sprayed on the sides, and everyone knows that good does not come from large beaten down vans with ‘free candy’ sprayed on the sides. Consider from this moment on all dolphins to be like the aggressive Snorky from the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode number eleven. Consider also that flirtatious encounter from the dolphin ‘Stinky’ at the Cayman Islands: the dolphin becomes so sexually aroused by the divers that it begins to show – literally. At one stage, it attempts to pin a diver to the ground so that it can comfortably get on top of him.

If you ever encounter a dolphin, be sure to remain on a boat and not get anywhere near the water, so as to avoid involuntarily becoming a creator of a half-dolphin half-human hybrid, and if you see a porpoise minding its own business near a dolphin, tell it not to, and to swim away faster than Ian Thorpe.