On the morning of August 7, 2022, a 39-year-old middle-aged woman was swimming on the shore in the beach of Tomii City, Japan, when she suddenly felt something touch her back. She turned her head to look at the ocean to see a black fin in the ocean, and she remembered the warning sign she had seen before she went into the water: Do not touch or approach the dolphins. Some panicked women wanted to swim around and return to the beach. Unexpectedly, this dolphin suddenly attacked her!
The dolphin opened its mouth and bit her left hand, leaving a dense wound on her body with its fine sharp teeth, and blood gushed out at that time, and the dolphin kept pulling on the woman's swimsuit to try to prevent the woman from returning to the shore.
While another 50-year-old male swimmer swimming near the woman spotted her under attack and quickly approached, trying to drive the dolphin away. Dolphins naturally included him in the target, constantly biting him and poking him in the nose. Finally, the man kicked the dolphin away with his leg during the fight with the dolphin. The dolphins did not continue to attack and dived underwater to leave.
Because of this sudden attack, the man's right hand and left elbow were injured, and he went to the hospital for three stitches.
But this is not the first recent dolphin attack, with at least 10 people injured in the beach since the beach opened on July 9. And the dolphins that attacked the two men appeared on the beach as early as June and caused many injuries. The Japanese city government can only install ultrasonic transmitters nearby to drive away dolphins and set up warning signs.
This is a bit unusual, because we have the impression that dolphins are docile and friendly creatures, they seem to have inexplicable feelings for humans, and there have been cases of people being carried to the surface of the sea by dolphins after falling into the water and swimming all the way to the shore.
Why do dolphins that are so friendly attack humans?
Dolphin's "revenge"?
One of the most vocal and probable speculations is that the dolphin is deliberately retaliating against humans.
In the animal kingdom, there are many examples of animals retaliating against humans, the most recent one is that the monkeys in India killed all the dogs in a village in retaliation, and there have been news that the golden eagle has been constantly attacking the murderer after the child of the golden eagle has been preyed. It seems that the more intelligent the animal, the more retaliatory it is.
The dolphin is undoubtedly a smart animal, compared with other animals, its brain is very developed, one-year-old dolphin brain weight reached 1600 to 1700 grams, even heavier than humans. Scientists have found that each dolphin's call is different, this call is their "name", dolphins can not only distinguish their companions by their calls, but also "call" each other by imitating the calls of their companions.
In 2013, American scientists did an experiment in which they played the sound of meeting a dolphin named "Bailey" through a loudspeaker. Bailey immediately "recognized" Alice, and they have actually been separated for more than 20 years, and this memory is stronger than that of monkeys and elephants, which is unique in the animal kingdom.
It is entirely possible that dolphins, who are intelligent and have a very good memory, will have a sense of revenge against humans, after all, this series of injuries occurred in Japan.
At the southern tip of The Japanese island of Honshu, there is a small harbor called Taiji Town, which is the migration route of animals such as dolphins and whales, but its other name is more famous - "Dolphin Bay". Every September, there is a bloody and brutal event where fishermen herd countless dolphins into the bay and then carry out a massacre, which lasts for about half a year.
Japan's habit of fishing whales and dolphins has a long history, and in 2016, the Japanese government spent billions of yen to support the whaling industry, and on December 26, 2018, Japan tore through the mask of hypocrisy, directly announced its withdrawal from the International Whaling Commission, and resumed commercial whaling in July 2019.
If these fishermen had relented in the past due to the international ban on whaling, now with the permission of the Japanese government, their behavior has become rampant. On September 1 last year, in just one day, they fished about 10 bottlenose dolphins. Of the dolphins caught, all but a few pretty little dolphins are sold to aquariums and parks, and the rest are slaughtered in neighboring bays.
Some people speculate that the bottlenose dolphin that continuously hurts people may have witnessed the atrocities of the Japanese, and even hurt himself or his companions by the Japanese, so he had a sense of revenge, which continued to attack humans. However, the dolphin has only been injured so far, and it is basically minor. So some experts believe that this should be two other situations: playfulness and courtship.
Dolphins have dangerous estrus periods
In August 2018, Puerto María in the Brittany region of France banned citizens from going to the sea because there was an outlier dolphin in the nearby waters, which was in heat. The dolphin was very close to humans when it first appeared, and tourists along the coast even named it Zafar, but once it entered the estrus period, it became a trouble. It not only used its body to hit the ship, but also deliberately prevented several tourists swimming in the sea from coming ashore, and even held up a female tourist with its nose, which made some tourists feel very frightened.
Unlike cute appearances, dolphins' courtship process is full of violence, and dolphins' courtship behavior is not necessarily for breeding purposes, and they may also court same-sex or other animals, including humans.
Male dolphins are often accompanied by some aggressive behavior in this process, which is only a small injury that can be recovered quickly for strong dolphins, but it is very dangerous for humans.
If the dolphin that frequently injures people in The Japanese bathing beach is a male dolphin in estrus, it can also explain its frequent attacks on humans.
Previously, experts have speculated about a situation in which dolphins are playing with humans.
Dolphins are social animals, a group of dolphins can generally have a dozen or so, they will play together, dolphin play between often accompanied by physical collisions. This collision may cause some minor injuries between dolphins, but it may lead to injuries or even fractures in humans.
Because the size of dolphins is actually very large, such as the "murderer" in the Dolphin Attack in Japan, it is an oriental bottlenose dolphin, their adult individual body length is between 1 meter 75 and 4 meters, weight can reach 230 kilograms, and the streamlined body allows them to swim at a speed of 30 to 50 kilometers per hour in the water, even sharks do not want to be hit by them.
Some experts believe that the previous attacks in The Japanese bathing beach may be that bottlenose dolphins treat humans as companions and try to interact with people, but because they are not well controlled, they cause injuries to humans. And after the humans were injured, the dolphins didn't attack further, so it's speculated that they just wanted to play with humans. But the dolphin's actions on August 7 seem to have gone beyond play, so the possibility of this speculation is suddenly reduced.
Dolphins are not without precedent for attacking humans, but mostly occur in aquariums, losing control due to the loss of freedom and long-term repetitive work. Just like the continuous attack of Japanese dolphins that caused more than 10 injuries, it is still particularly abnormal, especially in Japan, a country with the habit of killing whales and dolphins, which makes people wonder deeply, is this really the revenge of dolphins?
Resources
"Out of Control Dolphin" Zhao Yan
Dolphins – Wizards of the Sea World
Japan: The Conspiracy Behind the Global Bloody Whaling