Can Dolphins Bond With Humans?

In the 1963 film "Flipper," a young boy in Florida rescues an injured bottlenose dolphin and soon develops a close friendship with the animal. After many adventures together, the dolphin saves the boy from harm and is accepted as the family pet by the closing scene. Did Hollywood get the story right when it comes to dolphins and their relationships with humans? In this article, we'll discover if it's really possible for dolphins to bond with people, how they relate to one another in their own social circle and whether this marine mammal really is the guardian of the sea.

How Dolphins Communicate
To understand how dolphins might be capable of developing any type of meaningful relationship, we must first understand how they communicate. The Dolphin Communication Project (DCP) explains that dolphins use various whistles or clicks to stay in touch with one another. Just as people have distinct voices, dolphins have unique whistles that make it easy for other dolphins to identify them. A study conducted at the Shannon Dolphin and Wildlife Foundation in Ireland found that dolphins living in Wales produced an entirely different set of sounds than dolphins living in Ireland. This led researchers to believe that dolphin sounds may have a "local dialect" too, just as you'd find a difference in the way people speak depending on whether you're in New Jersey or Mississippi.

Dolphins communicate in other ways, like slapping their flippers against the water, but sounds are their primary communication tool. The DCP says that "dolphins produce whistles during social situations, when separated from friends, when excited, when happy and when panicked."

Dolphin Social Life
Dolphins usually stick together in groups called pods. Female dolphins have a propensity to socialize in a group of other females, while males are apt to form a connection with only one other adult male. According to research conducted by Dr. Edward Owen for the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, the main reason male dolphins pair up is to protect one another while mating with females. Two males are better able to guard a female against other male dolphins, giving them more opportunities to mate.

Much of a dolphin's behavior is learned through play. As young dolphins (calves) develop, they learn how society works by playing games with their mothers and other dolphins in their pod. Dolphins have been reported to use a jellyfish like a football or blow rings and then try to catch them, both examples of playtime which teaches calves creativity and problem solving. A dolphin's play behavior can be compared to the grooming rituals of a primate; both activities encourage bonding and teachable moments.

Learn More: Are dolphins smarter than apes?

Dolphin-human Bond
Encounters between dolphins and people have been documented since early civilization. They appear frequently in Greek mythology, including in Homer's "Hymn to Apollo," where the protagonist, Apollo, took the form of a dolphin in order to gain access to a ship. Other tales are a bit more realistic, painting stories of dolphins rescuing overboard sailors. It's sometimes hard to know which tales are fictional and which are fact, but modern-day news reports that have documented dolphin philanthropy may lead one to believe at least some of those ancient myths are true.

In New Zealand, for example, a group of swimmers avoided becoming a great white shark's next meal in 2004 thanks to a pod of dolphins that circled the swimmers until help arrived. And in 2007, a surfer in California who was attacked by a shark got a second chance when a pod showed up and formed a protective ring around the injured surfer until he was rescued. The U.S Navy has even used this altruistic mammal during the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War to deliver equipment to divers, among other tasks.

However, while dolphins might appear friendly and are proven sentinels of the sea, remember that "Flipper" is just a movie. Dolphins are wild animals and could bite or drag a person into the water. Never feed wild dolphins, and always regard them as the magnificent mammals they truly are.