The renewed popularity of dolphins in the 1960s resulted in the appearance of many dolphinaria around the world, making dolphins accessible to the public. Criticism and animal welfare laws forced many to close, although hundreds still exist around the world. In the United States, the best known are the SeaWorld marine mammal parks.
Attack on humans
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| Tilikum at SeaWorld. In 2010 he attacked and killed his trainer Dawn Brancheau, in his third fatal incident. |
Although dolphins generally interact well with humans, some attacks have occurred, most of them with small injuries.
The attacks can occur both in the wild and captivity.
Orcas, the largest species of dolphin, have been involved in fatal attacks on humans in captivity. The record-holder of documented orca fatal attacks is a male named Tilikum, that belongs to SeaWorld and has played a role in the death of three people in three different incidents (1991, 1999 and 2010).
There are documented incidents in the wild too, but none of them fatal.
Fatal attacks from other species are less common, but there is a registered occurrence in the coast of Brazil in 1994, when a man died after injuries suffered during a bottlenose dolphin attack.
Non-fatal incidents occur more frequently, both in wild and captivity.
While dolphin attacks are much rarer than other sea animal attacks, such as shark ones, some scientists are worried about the careless programs of human-dolphin interaction. Dr. Andrew J. Read, a biologist at the Duke University Marine Laboratory who studies dolphin attacks, points that dolphins are large and wild predators, so people should be more careful when they interact with them.
Military
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| A military dolphin |
A number of militaries have employed dolphins for various purposes from finding mines to rescuing lost or trapped humans. The military use of dolphins, however, drew scrutiny during the Vietnam War when rumors circulated that the United States Navy was training dolphins to kill Vietnamese divers.
The United States Navy denies that at any point dolphins were trained for combat. Dolphins are still being trained by the United States Navy on other tasks as part of the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program. The Russian military is believed to have closed its marine mammal program in the early 1990s. In 2000 the press reported that dolphins trained to kill by the Soviet Navy had been sold to Iran.
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