In the 1960s, neuroscientist John Lilly conducted NASA-funded experiments where researcher Margaret Howe Lovatt lived with a dolphin named Peter for months, attempting to teach him to vocalize English words.
The Woman Who Lived With a Dolphin to Teach It English
In the early 1960s, the space race wasn't just about rockets and astronauts. NASA was funding some truly unconventional research, including an attempt to establish communication with dolphins. The thinking? If we could learn to talk to Earth's other intelligent species, we might be better prepared to communicate with extraterrestrial life.
Enter John Lilly, a neuroscientist who believed dolphins were intelligent enough to learn human language. His most ambitious experiment took place at a specially designed facility in the U.S. Virgin Islands called the Dolphin House.
Living With Peter
In 1965, a young researcher named Margaret Howe Lovatt moved into a partially flooded house to live full-time with a bottlenose dolphin named Peter. The idea was total immersion—if Peter was constantly exposed to English, perhaps he would learn to speak it.
Lovatt spent six months living in ankle-deep water, sleeping on a wet bed, and spending virtually every waking moment with Peter. She would hold objects up to him, repeat words, and reward him for any sounds that resembled human speech.
The LSD Complication
Here's where the story takes its infamous turn. John Lilly had become interested in LSD as a tool for expanding consciousness and believed it might help dolphins make cognitive breakthroughs. He began injecting the dolphins, including Peter, with the psychedelic drug.
The results were not what he hoped for. The LSD experiments yielded no communication breakthroughs and ultimately contributed to NASA pulling their funding. The scientific community increasingly viewed Lilly's work as fringe science rather than legitimate research.
A Tragic End
When funding dried up in 1966, the dolphins were transferred to a smaller, darker facility in Miami. Peter, separated from Lovatt and confined to a cramped tank, died shortly after—Lovatt believes he essentially gave up on life. Dolphins are voluntary breathers, meaning they can choose to stop breathing. Many researchers believe Peter's death was a form of suicide.
The experiment is remembered today as a cautionary tale about the ethics of animal research and the dangers of letting enthusiasm outpace scientific rigor. While dolphins are indeed remarkably intelligent, their vocal apparatus simply isn't designed to produce human speech sounds—something modern science has since confirmed.
The Legacy
Despite its failures, the dolphin communication research did spark legitimate interest in animal cognition. Scientists now use symbol systems and computers to communicate with dolphins, achieving far more success than the ill-fated English lessons ever did.
As for Lovatt, she still defends the non-drug aspects of her work with Peter, describing their bond as profound. The story was brought back into public consciousness by a 2014 BBC documentary, introducing a new generation to one of science's strangest chapters.