Back in the eighties, when I got the dolphin fever, I was taught a lesson that would stay with me for good. I had been invited by the Dutch ‘Dolfinarium’ to organise an exhibition of my ‘Natural shapes in wood’ (see also DA 4, 5 and 6, 2013) and was given a tour in the trainers quarters. We came at the smaller basins and upon seeing me a dolphin came to the edge and put her wide open jaws on it. I saw the impressive rows of needle sharp teeth and the trainer said: ‘Now put your hand on her tongue’. For a moment I froze, then showed her my hand and put it on her tongue. The dolphin kept her jaws open and made a sound that rather resembled laughter. The trainer said; ‘Now you are friends!’. He explained: ‘You have given her your trust, so now she knows she can trust you.’
The simplicity of the transaction baffled me. This was pure emotional logic. It reminded me of shaking hands, a mutual implication of trust.
In the course of my dolphin career I have experienced this principle numerous times. Not only are dolphins 50 million years ahead of us, they have also lived in close-knit communities, so it stands to reason that their socio-emotional development is correspondently. They cannot elaborate upon written experience, their culture is ingrained in their memory. It has been asserted that dolphins have a three second attention span. Dusty, indeed, is easily distracted. In the following video, after five Dusty-less swims, we were cozily cuddling, then she hears a jet ski starting and off she goes.
But I have also seen how she picked up on people she hadn’t seen for many years. Apparently a leaky mind does not waylay a memory like an iron pot.
Dusty’s reputation as a ‘friendly’ dolphin rather took a nose dive, three years ago, when she rammed a few people into hospital. I have always explained to people that you have to put your trust in her. If you choose to swim with her you put yourself at her mercy. There is no two ways about that. In the water she is far superior over us and can wipe you out with one blow of her tail.
Human logic solves this by standing in the water, no more than waist deep, so you can run away in case of an attack. But to Dusty this is a manifestation of suspicion. If you don’t trust her, she has no reason to trust you. And after 12 years of infinite patience for so much ignorance and downright abuse she is finally forced to go for zero tolerance.
Nevertheless Dusty is still making new friends. And not only you’ll have to show that you trust her by going to the deep, you also should behave respectfully. That implies you don’t grab at her, but let her come to you. The more interesting you are to her, the more often she’ll come over. It’s funny how she reacts to spear fishers, They’d rather not have her around as she might scare the fish away, and exactly that behavior attracts her. She’s in for all kinds of games, once you have established a trusting relationship with her. She investigates, looks and listens intently at the things that you do and the sounds that you make. And she very prefers one-on-one interactions. When she is ‘busy’ with someone you’d better not come in between. You don’t just do that either in a conversation between two people, a matter of manners, and Dusty is very old school in that.
Then there is a separate category that raises her anger: small children that run into the water, shrieking with penetrating voices. That hurts my ears over a distance of 100 meter, so you can imagine how threatening this sounds in Dusty’s ears, which are many times more sensitive than ours.
This all is no high school dolphinry, but some basic insight that some people like to make a complex problem of. This info could effectively replace the cows letter signs with ‘Danger’. But indeed, then they would have to be read as well. And those for whom this is mostly meant, don’t do that.
The VIDEO linked here, is a selection of Dusty videos that I compiled for our course’s end exhibition. Enjoy!