BF_in_Michigan

John Taranto in today's Best of the Web: Yesterday we noted a zany letter to the editor in an item we said "has no point." How wrong we were. It turns out that the letter writer, Dave Genova of Asheville, N.C., was dead wrong when he described dolphins as peaceful creatures. They have, in fact, been implicated in a whole host of crimes: * Bullying. "Gangs of strong males pick on younger or smaller dolphins," National Geographic television reported in 1999. * Domestic violence. "Dr. Richard Connor, studying dolphins in Shark Bay in Western Australia, has documented cases of males kidnapping and holding females captive, sometimes for months at a time," according to National Geographic. * Interspecies hate crimes. "Harbour porpoises are being killed in increasing numbers by bottlenose dolphins around British coasts," the BBC reported in January. The New York Times reported in 1999 that "dolphins have been found to bludgeon porpoises to death by the hundreds." * Infanticide. "Dolphin researchers from the United States and Britain recently reported that baby bottlenose dolphins found dead on the shores of both countries were likely battered to death by adult bottlenose dolphins," reported Ocean Watch in 1998. The Times reported in 1999 that "off Scotland, a scientist watched in shock for nearly an hour as an adult dolphin repeatedly picked up a baby in its mouth and smacked it against the water, over and over, until it sank from view." * Sexual Assault. "A Norwegian man is accusing a dolphin of attempted rape," Reuters reported from Oslo in 1999. "Norway's top-selling daily Verdens Gang on Tuesday quoted the 28-year-old as saying that the dolphin apparently mistook him for a female after swimming alongside him in the sea off Farsund, south Norway, earlier this month. The dolphin's penis got caught between the man's swimming costume and his legs. . . . 'The dolphin shoved me forward two or three metres [six to 10 feet] before I got loose,' he said. 'At first I thought it was a fin . . . but dolphins don't have fins on their underbellies.' " But here's some good news: It turns out that the fishing nets used to catch tuna have the added benefit of ensnaring and killing dolphins. Tuna that is not caught using this method is labeled "dolphin safe" so that you can avoid it. This Web site has a helpful list of supermarket chains that sell non-dolphin-safe tuna. Tuck away a nice tuna-salad sandwich, and you'll be doing your part to save the world from the delphine menace. The Delphine Menace

Go Explorers! LSHS '79