10 Reasons Why Dolphins Are A$$holes

Treehugger recently posted 10 Reasons Why Dolphins Are Undeniably Awesome.  This is all nice and well but this does overlook some key aspects of dolphins that should be recognized.  Good luck trying to sleep tonight when you start thinking about dolphins.

1. They gang rape femalesAs Miriam wrote before XXfactor, “Dolphin sex can be violent and coercive. Gangs of two or three male bottlenose dolphins isolate a single female from the pod and forcibly mate with her, sometimes for weeks at a time. To keep her in line, they make aggressive noises, threatening movements, and even smack her around with their tails. And if she tries to swim away, they chase her down.”

 2. They are horny and they don’t mind humans as a partner. Being horny is all fun and good until you are the unwanted recipient. Horny dolphins can target human swimmers.  Demi Moore is rumored to have had a close encounter of the finny kind.

3. Dolphins have prehensile penises.  This combined with the #2 is more than enough to scare the bejebus out of me.  I thank Christopher Moore and his book Fluke for painting a vivid mental image of this.

4. Dolphins kill babies of other species.  Again quoting Miriam, “In Scotland, scientists found baby harbor porpoiseswashed up with horrific internal injuries. They thought the porpoises might have been killed by weapons tests until they found the toothmarks. Later, dolphins were caught on film pulping the baby porpoises-the dolphins even used their ecolocation to aim their blow at the porpoises’ vital organs.”

5. Dolphins kill their own babies.  Males are known to kill off babies.  In one study, 5 juvenile bottlenose dolphins had fatal injuries consistent with a bottlenose dolphin attack.  Infanticide by males may occur within dolphins, as it does in other species, because females become immediately ready for pregnancy after the death of infant.  The study also suggests that violent interactions with harbour porpoises (near 100 incidents in this study alone) by bottlenose dolphins may occur because they confuse infants of the two species.

6. Dolphins never sleep.  Yep dolphins can stay awake for five days straight with no loss of mental acuity. And after missing all that sleep they don’t even need to catch it up with little dolphin naps.  So great, horny dolphins are probably awake while I’m sleeping.  Just fantastic.

7. Dolphins are voracious predators.  Dolphins are not some crystal and patchouli wearing vegan.  Nope they are stone cold meat eaters.  The feed in packs so no fish or squid can escape.  Hunts are coordinated and focused on decimating prey. Dolphins are inventive and creative and nothing is safe.  Not even us on land.

8. Dolphins like to screw around with other animals just for the hell of it.  Sure dolphins love to play and that is sooooooo cute.  Of course, when all those cute toys become boring what should a dolphin do? Use a baby shark as a volleyball h/t to SFS

9. Dolphins are sexually transmitted disease bags.  Yep dolphins are just full of STD’sh/t to SFSScreen Shot 2013-02-13 at 1.30.58 PM10. Freakin dolphin and rainbow art.  I blame dolphins for this trend.  This stuff is all horrible, a blight on human existence.  It’s so bad I think it actually discourages people from becoming marine biologists.  And let’s not even start with dolphin and rainbow tattoos.  Or the “very unique” dolphin on the ankle tattoo! There is only one cool dolphin tattoo.

Also now that you are primed make sure you take a look at The Oatmeal’s Five Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth

 

90 Replies to “10 Reasons Why Dolphins Are A$$holes”

  1. I did a presentation on this in college years ago, wish I had those videos then :P

    Dolphins are not the cute superheroes of the sea that people imagine them to be.

    Anyone who loves dolphins but hates sharks is just a finist.

    Finist: one who discriminates against a marine animal based on the position of its caudal fin

  2. This was absolutely awesome! I knew about the Dolphin rape and human-dolphin interactions. However, THUG DOLPHINS?! Thanks for the warning. :)

  3. I was looking for news on the Football team and this is what I found. I looked for updates on one nightmare and stumbled on another. Grey, std infected rapists that feel like wet hot dogs. No wonder the Japanese hate them so much!

  4. Of course, it’s worth noting that all the bad behavior listed is also extensively documented in humans.

  5. This really applies to young teenage dolphins, like all teenagers can be a bit crazy, there are infinitely more good dolphins that bad ones. Dont let a few terrorist nutcase dolphins spoil the beauty of these creatures! Every intelligent species has some bad ones.

  6. This article is awesome. I can’t stop laughing. I know it’s wrong but I kinda want a crappy dolphin rainbow tattoo now.

  7. This is utter garbage. I know this is supposed to be tounge in cheek, but most of your points are irrelevant. On #2, there is no objective evidence that any of these encounters were sexual in nature. that’s just the way humans perceived the behavior. On #3, this is a physical attribute not behaviorial. #6, how does this make them assholes? If anything, that makes them awesome and it belongs on the other list. Besides, there is a big difference between never sleeping and sleeping less often than humans. #7, again, how does this make them assholes? they need to eat, they are efficient hunters. #9, unless there is evidence of dolphins knowing they carry a desease and intentionally giving that disease to other dolphins, this is completely irrelavent. #10 takes the cake. Dolphin inspired art? Really? You are blaming bad art done by humans on dolphins? [ad hominem attack removed by editor]

  8. Me again, probably should have said I have no sense of humour. I’m also a dolphin and would like to put myself in number 11 spot, thanks,

    Dolphin Dave.

  9. “Sleeping

    Generally, dolphins sleep with only one brain hemisphere in slow-wave sleep at a time, thus maintaining enough consciousness to breathe and to watch for possible predators and other threats. Earlier sleep stages can occur simultaneously in both hemispheres. In captivity, dolphins seemingly enter a fully asleep state where both eyes are closed and there is no response to mild external stimuli. In this case, respiration is automatic; a tail kick reflex keeps the blowhole above the water if necessary. Anesthetized dolphins initially show a tail kick reflex. Though a similar state has been observed with wild sperm whales, it is not known if dolphins in the wild reach this state. The Indus river dolphin has a sleep method that is different from that of other dolphin species. Living in water with strong currents and potentially dangerous floating debris, it must swim continuously to avoid injury. As a result, this species sleeps in very short bursts which last between 4 and 60 seconds.”

    – los wiki

  10. To illustrate your point about how the rape females you include a video that shows ONLY male on male violence, male on male rape.

    Up yours and your politically correct erasure.

  11. I didn’t see anything here about Dolphins bad side that humans are also pretty damn good at as well. So it sounds to me a little like the pot calling the kettle black.

  12. It’s like Jonathan Coulton says in “I Crush Everything”

    And the dolphins are all phonies,
    They seem nice enough at first.
    But they pretend to be your friend
    Until they see you at your worst and then they leave you.
    Without a word, they swim away.

  13. Having had family living in Sedona AZ, home of the “harmonic convergence centers” and only “family friendly dolphin depictions” I often would point out to dolphin art artist some of the elucidations above to combat the “happy nice dolphin riding off into the sunset with Kokopelli” myth. I was nearly stoned by a crowd of unhappy hipsters not liking alternative views of their saintly dolphins.

  14. Shared a place with a dolphin keeper years ago, when I worked with mammals at a zoological collection in England, the guy was always getting home covered in bites and bruises – all down to the dolphins, never the killer whale!! I got less injuries from 100+ assorted bears, wolves, cheetahs, lions and tigers!

  15. You may want to rethink your piece. Everything AND MORE that you charged the dolphins with, MAN does. So welcome to this a$$hole’s world a$$hole. Best regards,

  16. Just one quibble–I really feel strongly that we should not use the word rape to describe behavior in non-human animals. Forced copulation in animals is NOT the same as rape in humans. These two terms are not synonymous. We know that rape causes major psychological trauma in humans; we don’t know that about ducks or dolphins or insects. There is already a trend to use the word rape to describe…pretty much anything uncomfortable.

    I think we devalue the horror of the word by using it on non-humans.

    The word “rape” also has moral connotations, and I think most of us would agree that non-human organisms cannot be moral agents.

  17. Most of these behaviors have also been observed in humans – except, possibly, using a baby shark as a volleyball.

  18. Since I am human and not dolphin, I have no worries of being raped by a dolphin. Although a dolphin may attempt to rape a human, this has happened only in captive “swim with dolphin” parks, which are evil in of themselves. And being female, I need not worry about being murdered by a dolphin, as dolphins murder only males..particularly if the male is your boyfriend and you are swimming in the ocean with him. Wild dolphins have rescued more peeps than they’ve injured, although this is also a rare occurence. So I shall have no problem sleeping tonight, counting dolphins. I love you my dolphin cousins of the sea!

    And please boycott captive dolphin swims/shows.

  19. Yeah because all of these apply to males…. If you actually read it you will see that only a few of these pertain to only males. Thoroughly read something before you start spouting your mouth off, god damned feminist.

  20. Oh. My. GOD! Dolphin Rape!!!!! I can’t believe that they grab people with their own dildos… wait… this only says bad stuff about boy dolphins. what’s so bad about the females?!? >:(

  21. nice….. absolutely NOTHING wrong with girl dolphins. I showed this site to my cousin Damian yesterday, and he cried. he loves dolphins. thank you SO MUCH for destroying a child’s dreams! and why’d you have to put up a picture of a dolphin vaj? I had to explain that to Damian. who is – FYI – 7YEARS OLD!!!!!!!!!

  22. Has nothing to do with feminism, IDIOT. In order to stop saying such retarded things it’s best not to GENERALIZE someone as something you find unsatisfactory just because they mentioned one gender in a bad light.

  23. Aww, does someone not like females in general? You need to get that dick out of your ass you male-centered twat. These dolphin ‘gender’ issues do not apply to us humans, RETARD, and what you see in these videos is FEMALES being victims. So far no one has posted any male-on-male rapes between dolphins, so your point about that is moot. And besides that, FEMALES are not the cause of male-on-male violence or rape, only MALES are. The MALES should get the blame for that, leave females and their issues separate.

  24. Also, this has nothing to do with ‘political correctness’ you stupid conservative MRA p.o.s. It has everything to do with your obvious butthurtness about the obvious fact that the majority of victims for sex-variant (NOT same-sex) crimes are females, not just humans but in most other ‘similar’ animals too. The rapes of the female dolphins by the male dolphins in the video is a sex-variant ‘crime’ because it has one sex being the victim while the other sex being the perpetrator, which means that this case involves both sexes and not just one.

  25. You’re angry with the author because YOU showed an article to a 7-year old? I really, really hope you’re just trolling, or have been on the internet for about 2 weeks and didn’t realize what horrors await you on the worldwide web…

  26. Are you guys for real like seriously? Dolphins are “assholes” because they can stake awake for 5 days? REALLY! Humans Rape people…Like Humans are assholes. Dolphins are very intelligent. AND HOW IN THE HELL are you going to blame a dolphin for “Freakin dolphin and rainbow art. I blame dolphins for this trend”….The Eff is your problem? stop hating on One of the most intelligent mammals out there.

  27. So the fact that the dolphin had a jumbo boner didn’t kind of give a hint hehe

    Fair enough – if you personally come up to me and begin rubbing your cock on my arse…I’d assume it was not sexual in nature lol

  28. Also – this site is humorous … it is a laugh. It is not intended to be the b all and end all of aquatic science. It is a few facts that we didn’t know about dolphins.
    People need to chill down a bit and see the humorous side.

  29. you people are sick! dolphins are the sweetest caring and most intelligent animals on earth. this site is crap all of these things you are saying about dolphins raping and having inappropriate sex with them is crap. its people that we have to watch from hurting other people like this

  30. thank you im so glad im not the only person who feel this way these people nedd to get their heads out of their butts and wake up

  31. A dolphin saved my life. So, you idiots who think you know something about dolphins are wrong. My story is anecdotal; the science behind the human-dolphin connection is overwhelming. Just because they interfere with your livelihood doesn’t make them bad animals. Try another line of work, fucking high school dropouts.

  32. lol people need to chill. It’s a joke and was merely bringing up points you may not have known about dolphins. On the flip side these people are hilarious when mad XD

  33. Why do intelligent species rape?? Whats wrong with the males of intelligent species ? Im a feminist and god i hate dolphins now ;->

  34. Lol, there are multiple animals who have characteristics you mentioned of a dolphin. It’s an animal, they don’t have morals like we do. They just know nature of life. And dolphins are one of the smartest animals alive on the planet surpassing the monkey. And humans do these things and we’re assholes too. And seeing as you didn’t exempt any dolphin and basically said all of them are like this, I would call you an asshole also.

  35. I dunno. I was willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt and watched video #7 closely, even rewinding and reviewing in parts. I saw nothing to support his claim. No land creatures were touched. In fact, it looked like the dolphins just enjoyed thrusting onto the mud then sliding back down. Must feel good. There wasn’t a single scene where any land animal or bird was caught. Gave you your chance and so I’ll now judge the rest of the site as, in the words of Daniel Tosh, “BS.”

  36. Again, #2 is also a stretch. It’s entertaining, I’ll give the author that, but hardly can be classified as “humans as a partner” unless you believe dolphins understand cunninglingus. What’s more likely is the female swimmer was menstrual (or immediately pre- or post-). LOL At least now I know the site is a gag. Yeah, former Marine, so it takes me more time to get these things than the usual Hah-vud grad. :)

  37. Congratulations- you just described a population of humans!

    Face it dude- every species has their negatives.

  38. I’m sorry but if you want to judge because something was wrong, then don’t judge the entire site or page for that. The rest is true…dolphins do have prehensile penises and they do forcefully mate with females. Don’t be so quick to judge. I will agree with you however on the part about dolphins thrusting in the mud…they seemed to be playing around and rolling but most of the rest is true.

  39. Because only intelligent species CAN rape. It takes a certain level of sophistication and self-awareness to be able to consent/not consent, and it takes similarly high level of sophistication to deliberately violate consent.

  40. It’s actually not just intelligent species. Non-intelligent species, including insects, also rape.

  41. yeah, now that it seems to be in fashion to show how nice wild animals are, how much we have to take care of them (which I agree with), it is also good to see that they are not fairy tale creatures. To be rational, or I would rather say, to have the capability to be rational is not that bad men…

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