Love knows no age – and apparently for one woman, no species. 

Most people can recall a questionable relationship from their 20s, but for Margaret Howe Lovatt, she had to navigate a dolphin named Peter falling in love with her.

Lovatt’s love story began in the mid-1960s, when the then 23-year-old volunteered for a NASA-funded project to try and communicate with the mammals at the Dolphin Point laboratory on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas.

‘I was curious,’ Lovatt, nee Howe, told The Guardian in an interview from 2014, describing the center.

Lovatt recalled driving to the large white building where the laboratory was and meeting director of the lab Gregory Bateson, who introduced her to the animals and invited her to observe them.

Despite not having scientific training, Lovatt proved to have some astute observations about the dolphins, with Bateson inviting her to come back whenever she wanted. 

‘There were three dolphins,’ Lovatt recalled. ‘Peter, Pamela and Sissy. Sissy was the biggest. Pushy, loud, she sort of ran the show. Pamela was very shy and fearful. And Peter was a young guy. He was sexually coming of age and a bit naughty.’

The lab was founded by neuroscientist Dr. John Lilly, who had published a quasi-sci-fi book in 1961 which proposed the theory that dolphins wanted to communicate with humans. He designed the lab with the intentions to allow humans and dolphins to live in closer proximity.

Lovatt’s love story began in the mid-1960s, when the then 23-year-old volunteered for a NASA-funded project to try and communicate with the mammals at the Dolphin Point laboratory on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas

Lovatt soon became consumed with the project, spending more and more time in the lab with the aquatic mammals. 

Lilly had hoped to communicate with the creatures, and encourage them to make human-like sounds through their blow holes through daily lessons.

However, she felt like she wasn’t making enough progress, deciding instead to focus on Peter alone, increasing the time spent one-on-one training him. 

Still not satisfied, and feeling she was spending all her time with Peter at the facility anyway, Lovatt moved into the lab in 1965.

She and Dr. Lilly set up an indoor aquarium at Dolphin Point where she and Peter could live together, so she could work on teaching him English 24/7. 

Peter and Lovatt co-existed in the lab six days of the week, and on the seventh day, the dolphin would go back to the enclosure with Pamela and Sissy. 

The experiment lasted for three months, with Lovatt keeping detailed notes. In her recollections of the experiment, Lovatt described the dolphin being ‘very, very interested’ in her anatomy. 

‘If I was sitting here and my legs were in the water, he would come up and look at the back of my knee for a long time. He wanted to know how that thing worked and I was so charmed by it,’ she recalled. 

Lovatt said there three dolphins Peter, Pamela and Sissy. 'Sissy was the biggest. Pushy, loud, she sort of ran the show. Pamela was very shy and fearful. And Peter was a young guy. He was sexually coming of age and a bit naughty,' Lovatt recalled

Lovatt said there three dolphins Peter, Pamela and Sissy. ‘Sissy was the biggest. Pushy, loud, she sort of ran the show. Pamela was very shy and fearful. And Peter was a young guy. He was sexually coming of age and a bit naughty,’ Lovatt recalled

Lovatt had also started noticing the Peter, who was a sexually maturing adolescent dolphin, was becoming aroused frequently during their sessions. 

She also noted that it was very difficult to try and teach a dolphin to talk when he is aroused.

Lovatt found that Peter ‘would rub himself’ on her knee, foot or hand – adding that she would allow him to do so.

‘I wasn’t uncomfortable — as long as it wasn’t too rough,’ she said assuredly. 

‘It was just easier to incorporate that and let it happen, it was very precious and very gentle, Peter was right there, he knew that I was right there,’ she added.

Peter was being transported to the enclosure with the other dolphins to relieve his sexual urges at first, which was reportedly logistically quite difficult. 

The loss of time and difficult of moving Peter led Lovatt to eventually begin relieving Peter of his urges herself.

‘It would just become part of what was going on, like an itch, just get rid of that scratch and we would be done and move on,’ she explained.

While Lovatt said nothing was sexual on her part, the story of her sexual encounters with Peter ended up overshadowing the experiment, amplified by an article in Hustler in the late 1970s.

The experiment came to an end in 1966, when Lilly, who had become increasingly interested in LSD and it’s effects, started to dose herself and the dolphins, leading to the end of the lab’s funding.

Sadly, Peter never recovered from Lovatt leaving the center, with Lilly calling Lovatt a few weeks after her departure to report that Peter died, suggesting he had killed himself by opening his blowhole underwater.

Locatt remained on St Thomas and ended up marrying the photographer that worked on the project. They share four daughters and converted the abandoned Dolphin Point laboratory into a home for their family.

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