When people think of dolphins, they tend to think of the bottlenose dolphin, and they tend to associate them with Flipper shows at their local aquarium or marine park, and glittery notebook covers and other school supplies. They’re harmless, right? After all, an animal that’s literally always smiling can’t possibly be vicious or violent, right? The reality is that the bottlenose dolphin is a surprisingly large animal. Your average dolphin is something like twice as long as you are and potentially several times as heavy.
You’re also probably meeting it in the water, where it has a distinct advantage. And at the end of the day, this is a wild animal. We’re talking about a wild animal with a propensity towards violence, rape, and killing indiscriminately, including babies of their own species. Dolphins are known for their friendly and playful demeanor, but some people fear these marine mammals because of their size. Dolphins attack humans?
Read on to find out. Dolphins are one of the world’s most intelligent creatures, surpassed only by humans and certain primates. They use echolocation for hunting prey like fish or squid. They can also help disabled people or detect underwater mines. Dolphins have been seen to perform activities that seem to protect people, rescuing swimmers from sharks and hurting fish.
However, dolphins can become aggressive and attack humans when threatened or in pain, like all animals. While humans claim the title of most intelligent species by a comfortable margin, the number two spot is hard to call. Elephants and dolphins appear to be in a close contest. Dolphins are extremely intelligent and creative to the point of developing primitive culture, specifically teaching their young to use specific tools. This means that while for the most part, dolphins and humans get along like a house on fire, all dolphins have the potential to be extremely dangerous.
Dolphins have a very sophisticated set of vocalizations, which include personal identifiers. That’s right, they name each other. It also means that unless you have extensive training and working with dolphins, what you think means we should play might mean stay away. You’re freaking me out. Bottom line unless you have history with a particular dolphin, it’s best to admire them from a distance.
Janet Ferreira was in the middle of a cruise with her husband, Steve Ferreira, and their kids and grandkids to celebrate her 40th anniversary when she was attacked by a dolphin and broke her back, Boston 25 News reported Tuesday. It was August 2019, and the family was traveling in the Caribbean islands in Mexico, the news station reported.
They had stopped for a swim with dolphins in Cozumel, which Janet had booked through the cruise company Royal Caribbean and which had cost hundreds of dollars, Boston 25 News said. Janet was in the water waiting for two dolphins to swim up behind her for a dolphin toe when one of the dolphins began charging her into her lower back. Maybe 2 seconds after that hit.
Here comes another one, Janet told the news station. It’s like somebody would take a baseball bat like David Ortiz would and take a baseball bat and just swing it at my back. You start thinking, if this hits me one more time, I could die, die in front of my family and in front of my three young grandchildren. Janet told Boston 25 News that the dolphin hit her three times before a trainer intervened. The news station reported that Janet was taken to a local hospital with a broken spine and ribs.
Her friends and family worked together a medical flight back to Boston to be treated. She lied in bed for about a day and a half without any treatment until a transport could be arranged, Janet’s attorney, George Lenard, told Boston 25 News. Janet began walking again after a month, Boston 25 News reported, but she had to quit her job as a teacher due to the permanent damage to her spine. Janet has filed a lawsuit against Dolphin Discovery Cozumel. The company in charge of the dolphin swim, and Royal Caribbean, the news station reported.
Royal Caribbean declined to comment on pending litigation to Boston 25 News. But in a statement, the Dolphin company, the parent company of Dolphin Discovery Cozumel. Told the news station. Above all, safety and security are our number one priority. Any type of unplanned experience is very rare, yet something we take very seriously, according to Boston 25 News.
Dolphin attacks are rare, but getting injured while traveling is common and can be a very negative experience. You feel alone, you’re helpless. Help us because we felt that they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know how to handle it, Steve Ferrera told the news station. Boston 25 News reported that one in five Americans get hurt on vacation, with cars and bike crashes, slips and falls, and food poisoning being the most common reasons.
Whether or not you can receive medical care depends on what country you’re in, Ann Lis, a travel adviser with AAA Northeast, told the news station. She told Boston 25 News that medical care outside the US. Is not covered by Medicare and most private health insurance and that some countries require proof of payment before you can be seen. Liz told the news station that travel insurance, which costs about 3% to 11% of your total trip, can help prevent these scenarios, as they often cover medical expenses abroad and air ambulance rides back to the US. It’s not necessarily a one size fits all.
You want to think about what’s important to you and what you’re concerned about, Liz told the news station. You call one number and they tell you what to do, and they’ll tell you what hospital to go to, and they’ll walk you through all of that. Since dolphins are capable of killing even very large sharks by headbutting them in their stomachs, the sharks are beautifully adapted to the water, while humans are not. If a dolphin wanted to attack humans in the water, the humans would have very little chance of survival, and it would be all over the news. What does happen, though, is that there are many accounts of dolphins saving humans.
Dolphins have chased off sharks that were circling humans, getting ready to attack. Dolphins have pushed floating humans toward the shore and on some occasions have even left drowning. Humans hang on to them to save themselves. Dolphins are very intelligent creatures. Some say there may be on par with humans.
That makes it very unlikely they would attack us. It seems like dolphins have a dark side, even attacks their trainer. A dolphin struck a female trainer during a show at the Miami Sea Aquarium on Saturday, according to a statement from the Florida facility. Photographer Shannon Carpenter says he watched the incident at the aquarium’s Dolphin Flippers show with his family and captured the event on camera. His footage was shared on TikTok and later obtained by several media outlets, including WPLG.
In the clip, the dolphin acted aggressively towards the trainer before the woman can get out of the water, where another staff member comes to aid her. It looked like the dolphin rammed into the trainer, Carpenter told WSBN. There was a struggle. Some kind of collision underwater happened. The lady on the paddle board, she paddled out of the water pretty quickly, and then the lead trainer started swimming back towards the dock, and it looked like she got ran into a couple of more times.
The kids were cheering, thinking it was neat, Carpenter added to WPLG. You could tell the adults knew something was wrong. Carpenter said the trainer was taken by ambulance to a local hospital. Her condition remains unclear. Naomi A.
Rose, a marine mammal scientist at the Animal Welfare Institute, told Newsweek the incident likely occurred because the dolphin was frustrated by something or trying to communicate something. She added that dolphins rarely do anything accidentally.
The Sea Aquarium released a statement about the incident on Tuesday obtained by people on Thursday while demonstrating a practice behavior as part of the Flippers show on April 9, a trainer accidentally scratched the dolphin, Sundance with her hand, the statement read. This was undoubtedly painful to Sundance, who reacted by breaking away from the routine and swimming towards and striking the trainer. Both Sundance and the trainer are recovering well.
The collision between Sundance and the trainer was something that has never happened before to either of them, the statement continued. As a result, procedures for this presentation and others are being evaluated. Adjustments to protocol for trainers and dolphins alike will minimize the chance of future accidents. PETA called for the Miami Sea Aquarium to find a new home for its dolphins following the incident. This woman paid to play with dolphins, but it turned into a nightmare.
A woman who paid $100 or £64 to swim with dolphins in Punta Cana landed up in the hospital after they apparently took a dislike to her swimwear. The dolphins were said to have become annoyed by a metal ring on Sylvana struck as a bikini, and not long after she entered the enclosure at Bavara Beach, they began to circle her, singles her out from the rest of the swimmers before one of them slapped her in the face with its tail. Then she was hit in the chest, leaving her with broken cartilage and extensive bruising. I almost died as I couldn’t breathe. All my body was in shock.