“The baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin, was this unique and beautiful creature — there was nothing quite like it,” said Samuel Turvey, a British zoologist and conservationist who spent more than two decades in China trying to track the animal down.
“It was around for tens of millions of years and was in its own mammal family. There are other river dolphins in the world but this one was very different, so unrelated to anything else,” Turvey said. “Its demise was more than just another species tragedy — it was a huge loss of river diversity in terms of how unique it was and left huge holes in the ecosystem.”
Experts have expressed grave concern that other rare native Yangtze animal and plant species are likely to suffer a similar fate to the baiji river dolphin as worsening climate change and extreme weather conditions take their toll on Asia’s longest river.
China has been grappling with its worst heat wave on record and the Yangtze, the third longest river in the world, is drying up.
With rainfall below average since July, its water levels have plunged to record lows of 50% of their normal levels for this time of year, exposing cracked river beds and even revealing submerged islands.
The drought has already had a devastating effect on China’s most important river, which stretches an estimated 6,300 kilometers (3,900 miles) from the Tibetan plateau to the East China Sea near Shanghai and provides water, food, transport and hydroelectric power to more than 400 million people.
The human impact has been enormous. Factories were shut to preserve electricity and water supplies for tens of thousands of people have been affected.
Less talked about, experts say, is the environmental impact that climate change and associated extreme weather events have had on the hundreds of protected and threatened wildlife and plant species living in and around the river.
“The Yangtze is one of the world’s most ecologically critical rivers for biodiversity and freshwater ecosystems — and we are still discovering new species yearly,” said conservation ecologist Hua Fangyuan, an assistant professor from Peking University.
“Many of the little (known) and unknown fish and other aquatic species are most likely facing extinction risks silently and we simply do not know enough.”
Hundreds of species at risk
Over the years conservationists and scientists have identified and documented hundreds of wild animal and plant species native to the Yangtze.
Among them are the Yangtze finless porpoise which, similar to the baiji,faces extinction due to human activity and habitat loss, and critically endangered reptiles like the Chinese alligator and Yangtze giant softshell turtle — believed to be the largest living species of freshwater turtle in the world.
Experts have also noticed a drastic decline of many native freshwater species of fish, like the now extinct Chinese paddlefish and sturgeon.
At high risk is the Chinese giant salamander, one of the largest amphibians in the world. Wild populations have crashed, Turvey the zoologist said, and the species is “now on the verge of extinction.”
“Although they are a protected species, Chinese giant salamanders are under greater threat from climate change — increasing global temperatures and droughts will definitely do it no good when it is already extremely vulnerable,” Turvey said.
“They have for a long time faced threats like poaching, habitat loss and pollution but when you add climate change into the mix, their chances of survival become drastically thin,” he added.
“They can only live within freshwater environments and lower water levels would inevitably place greater pressure on their numbers across China.”
A problem for the world
Nature conservation groups like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) say the Yangtze’s plight is a major concern not only for the Chinese people and government, but also for the wider international community.
“Rivers around the world, from Europe to the United States, have declined to historically low flow levels that are negatively impacting ecosystems,” said its lead scientist Jeff Opperman.
“Reduced river flow and warmer waters in the Yangtze are a threat to freshwater species and increase pressure on already critically endangered animals like the remaining Yangtze finless porpoises and Chinese alligators left in the wild. Lower river levels also impact the health of (nearby) lakes and wetlands, which are vital to millions of migratory birds along the East Asian Flyway.”
Hua, the conservation ecologist, said more public awareness and greater efforts were needed to help China’s shrinking great river. “Humans depend on nature for survival, period. This is a lesson for any civilization,” she said.
“The Yangtze is the longest river in China and (all of) Asia and has long been a cradle of civilization. Despite severe conservation threats and losses over the years, there is still much biodiversity to conserve in and along the Yangtze.”
Few would deny the importance and symbolism of the Yangtze. But experts say unless action is taken — and soon — more species will follow the fate of the baiji and Chinese paddlefish.
Turvey, the British zoologist, warned against the sort of complacency that allowed the baiji to disappear.
“The Yangtze was a jewel in Asia’s crown. There is still so much biodiversity to fight for and we must not give up hope for saving species like giant salamanders, river reptiles and others,” Turvey said.
“If there’s anything we can learn from the death of the Yangtze River dolphin, it’s that extinction is forever and we can’t afford to take it lightly.”
A dolphin swims along a boat in Ten Thousand Islands, off the coast of Everglades City, Fla., Dec. 2019. (Erik Freeland/The New York Times)
A bottlenose dolphin found dead in a Florida canal this past spring tested positive for a highly virulent strain of bird flu, scientists said Wednesday. The announcement came a week after Swedish officials reported that they had found the same type of avian influenza in a stranded porpoise.
This version of the virus, which has spread widely among North American and European birds, has affected an unusually broad array of species. But these findings represent the first two documented cases in cetaceans, a group of marine mammals that includes dolphins, porpoises and whales.
It is too soon to say how commonly the virus infects cetaceans, but its discovery in two different species on two different continents suggests that there have “almost certainly” been other cases, said Richard Webby, an influenza virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times
“Our surveillance activities on a global scale are never sensitive enough to pick up the only two events of this kind,” said Webby, who was not involved in the initial detection of the virus but is now working with the Florida team on follow-up studies.
The virus has become so widespread in birds that it would not be surprising to see the pathogen pop up in other unexpected species, he added. “Unfortunately, I think this is maybe just sort of a sign of what’s to come should this virus not disappear,” he added.
Experts emphasize that the risk to humans remains low. In the United States, the version of the virus that is circulating has caused just one documented human infection, in a person known to have had contact with poultry, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But the spread of the virus to new species poses potential risks to wildlife and provides the virus with new chances to mutate and adapt to mammalian hosts.
This strain of bird flu, known as Eurasian H5N1, has spread rapidly through domestic poultry, affecting tens of millions of farmed birds, according to the Agriculture Department. Compared to previous versions of the virus, this lineage has taken an especially heavy toll on wild bird populations, felling eagles, owls, pelicans and more.
That, in turn, has put mammals that encounter wild birds at risk. As the outbreaks expanded this spring, the virus turned up in foxes, bobcats, skunks and other species. The virus has also been blamed for a spike in seal strandings in Maine, where bird flu has been detected in both gray and harbor seals.
The Florida dolphin, a young male, was found in March in a canal in Dixie County, where area residents noticed that the animal had become trapped between the pilings of a pier and a sea wall, said Dr. Michael Walsh, a veterinarian at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine who leads the university’s marine animal rescue program.
By the time rescuers arrived, the dolphin had died, he said. The team, which routinely conducts necropsies, collected a variety of samples from the dolphin and stored them until they could be analyzed in more detail.
At the time, the scientists had no reason to suspect that bird flu had made its way into dolphins, and they were not in a particular rush, said Walsh, who collaborated on the investigation with Dr. Robert Ossiboff, a veterinary pathologist, and Andrew Allison, a veterinary virologist, both at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine.
When the results came back this summer, they revealed signs of inflammation in the dolphin’s brain and the surrounding tissues, Walsh said. Scientists have previously documented brain inflammation in fox kits infected with the virus, which can cause neurological symptoms in birds and mammals.
Subsequent laboratory testing turned up Eurasian H5N1 in the dolphin’s brain and lungs. “The brain tissue really showed a high level of virus,” Walsh said.
Whether the virus contributed to the dolphin’s death remains unknown, as does precisely how the animal contracted it. But it is not hard to imagine a young dolphin investigating an ailing bird near the shoreline, Walsh said, adding: “These animals are always curious about their environment and checking things out. So if he came upon a sick, either dying or dead, bird, he might be very curious about it. He might mouth it.”
The virus was also responsible for the death of a porpoise found stranded in Sweden in June, the Swedish National Veterinary Institute said last week. The pathogen was found in several of the animal’s organs, including the brain, according to the agency.
So far, there is no evidence that cetaceans are spreading the virus to one another, Webby said. And Webby’s team, which has isolated and sequenced the virus detected in the Florida dolphin, has not found any signs that it has developed mutations associated with adaptation to mammals. “It still very much looks like a virus that you would pick up out of a bird,” he said.
But now that dolphins and porpoises are known to be susceptible, researchers can begin to look for the virus more proactively, including in any tissue samples they previously collected.
“Now, everybody’s going to be on guard for this,” Walsh said. “And that’ll help tell us how serious this really is for cetaceans on the coastlines.”
Facing criticism of your own creative work can be challenging. I should know. But when responding to criticism involves, well, punching down on marginalized communities, or going on random, unrelated, political tirades that recklessly bash people trying to stay healthy and safe during on-going pandemic, that’s crossing a line according to Valve. This has been the situation for the developer behind Steam game Domina, Dolphin Barn Incorporated, who has recently gotten into some hot water after Valve responded to the dev’s ‘abusive’ actions and ongoing bad behavior on the platform.
Described by PC Gamer as the “least likable developer on Steam,” Dolphin Barn Incorporated has gotten into repeatedly embarrassing and awful situations surrounding its game Domina, a pixel gladiator sim that was released in 2017. Known for responding to negative feedback with bigoted political views that also appeared in patch notes, Dolphin Barn received a ban on its own game’s Steam community forums. Valve highlighted offending behavior that included “insulting or flaming another user” and an overall “trend with abusive messages sent when banning players from [the game’s] hub.” These decisions come a few years after Valve pivoted to a more hands-off moderation policy on Steam, deciding to only weigh in on content that the company deems “illegal or straight up trolling.”
Kotaku has reached out to Valve for comment on this situation and its moderation policies.
As reported by Eurogamerover the weekend, Dolphin Barn Incorporated took to Twitter to share the news of its ban on Domina’s community forums on Steam, where a warning indicated that this was the ‘second time that one of [its] posts violates [Valve’s] discussion rules and guidelines.’ While the insertion of absurd anti-mask rants about grocery stores, and anti-trans rants into patch notes have earned the developer well-earned criticism, that’s not necessarily what has landed them in trouble with Valve this time. Rather, their hostile and errant behavior on Steam’s community forums in responding to gamers’ criticisms are largely what’s under scrutiny.
Dolphin Barn Incorporated’s Steam account reveals their forum posting history, which includes calling people a “spiteful c-word,” amidst accusations that those who have criticized the DLC are posting “fraudulent reviews.” The developer has taken to banning users on the Steam community forum who’ve raised this issue, and has at numerous points called people “r*tarded,” “betas,” accused people of being “impaired, inferior, and useless” “totally illiterate,” “cowards.” The dev randomly quotes biblical passages, maintains that they’re working “for God,” and has vaguely compared themselves to “Socrates, Jesus of Nazareth” and “Galileo.” He also at one point told someone that “if you want me chew your breakfast and [fuck] your girlfriend for you, too, send me your address.” They also continuously make references to centurions and armies.
Kotaku has reached out to Dolphin Barn Incorporated for comment on this situation.
As a response to the latest actions Valve has taken against Dolphin Barn, the developer posted an update on Steam with the angsty title “DONE.” Here it repeats the accusations of “dozens of fraudulent reviews” of Domina, speculates about the genitalia of those who issued the ban, and casts doubt about the game receiving future updates on the platform.
NOAA Fisheries, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced up to $20,000 for information on anybody who harassed a sick dolphin last month on Quintana Beach in Texas.
The bottlenose dolphin was stranded alive on the beach on April 10 and was pushed back into the water as beachgoers tried to swim with and ride the animal, the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network said in a Facebook post.
“She ultimately stranded and was further harassed by a crowd of people on the beach where she later died before rescuers could arrive on scene,” the network said.
Officials have obtained footage of the harassment in Texas that may help in identifying the people involved, NOAA said.
The Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibits the harassing, harming, killing or feeding of wild dolphins.
Harassing, harming, killing or feeding wild dolphins is punishable by up to $100,000 in fines and up to 1 year in jail per violation, the agency said.
Meanwhile, an adult dolphin died in March after she impaled in the head with a spear-like object on Fort Myers Beach, NOAA officials said, citing the dolphin’s autopsy. The agency is also offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information about that incident.
The animal was apparently in a begging position for feeding when it was attacked while still alive. She appeared to have died from the trauma, NOAA said in a statement.
“Begging is not a natural behavior for dolphins and is frequently associated with illegal feeding. People can help prevent future harm to wild dolphins by not feeding or attempting to feed them,” it said.
The agency — whose mission is stewardship of ocean resources and habitats — advised people to avoid interacting with stranded marine animals because they may be sick or injured.
Pushing animals back into the water delays the animal getting the help it needs and may result in re-stranding in worse condition, it said.
CNN’s Michelle Watson and Rebekah Riess contributed to this report.
“She was ultimately stranded and was further harassed by a crowd of people on the beach where she later died before rescuers could arrive on scene,” the network wrote in a post on Facebook.
Quintana Beach County Park officials said the animal became stranded on the shore south of Houston on Sunday evening. According to Brazoria County, park staff were called to keep the public away from the dolphin, but it died before rescuers could arrive from Galveston.
“By then the perpetrators were long [gone] and the animal was dead,” Quintana Beach County Park officials said, calling the event “a tragedy.”
The dolphin was taken for a necropsy, a non-human autopsy, to see why it had become stranded, the county said.
The non-profit marine mammal group says people should not swim or interact with a stranded dolphin or whale, nor should they try to push them back to sea. Marine Mammal Protection Act regulations prohibit feeding and harassing marine mammals in the wild. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which works with the Texas nonprofit, says to stay at least 50 yards away from such creatures.
NOAA officials said they were aware of the dolphin’s death and are seeking information about it.
On Scotland’s west coast is the Firth of Clyde, a large saltwater inlet home to thousands of harbor porpoises—and one dolphin named Kylie.
Kylie hasn’t been observed with other common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) in at least 14 years—but she’s far from alone. On clear days in the Clyde, visitors to the marina can sometimes see Kylie swimming with harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena), cetacean cousins about two-thirds her size.
New research published in Bioacoustics this January suggests Kylie’s ties to porpoises are closer than scientists imagined. While a common dolphin’s vocal repertoire should include a diverse range of clicks, whistles, and pulse calls, Kylie doesn’t whistle. Instead, she “talks” more like harbor porpoises, which communicate using high-pitched bursts of clicks.
The study suggests that she may be communicating with the porpoises, or at least attempting to. It’s part of a growing body of work that illuminates a rich world of interactions between different cetacean species.
“Clearly, species in the wild interact much more than we thought,” says dolphin behavior expert Denise Herzing.
Porpoise code
Years ago, the Clyde’s lone dolphin resident was partial to a buoy at the mouth of a loch called the Kyles of Bute, so locals took to calling her Kylie. But nobody knows where she came from, or exactly why dolphins end up alone, says David Nairn, founder and director of Clyde Porpoise, a local organization devoted to researching and protecting marine mammals. (Kylie hasn’t been sighted in a year, but locals hope she will return soon.)
Some solitary dolphins end up alone after being separated from their natal groups by storms or human activity, or after being orphaned. Others still may simply be less sociable and prefer their privacy, according to a 2019 study on solitary dolphins worldwide.
To learn more about Kylie’s relationship with the porpoises, Nairn borrowed a hydrophone and towed it behind his sailing yacht, the Saorsa. Nairn captured audio of multiple encounters between Kylie and porpoises from 2016 to 2018.
“She definitely identifies as a porpoise,” says Nairn, who trained as an aquatic biologist in college.
Mel Cosentino, then a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, pored over thousands of ultrasonic cetacean clicks from the recordings.
While dolphins whistle almost constantly, porpoises never do. Instead, they communicate exclusively with what are called narrow-band, high-frequency (NBHF) clicks, with eight to fifteen amplitude peaks at around 130 kilohertz.
“To hear an NBHF click you have to play it about one hundred times slower,” Cosentino says. (When sounds are slowed down, pitch descends. Humans can hear between 20 hertz, roughly equivalent to the lowest pedal on a pipe organ, and 20 kilohertz.)
In the recordings, Cosentino identified lower-frequency clicks standard for common dolphins. But even when Kylie appeared to be alone, Cosentino found clicks with eight or more amplitude peaks at the key 130 kilohertz- mark—the frequency at which porpoises chat. In other words, Kylie talks like a porpoise even when solo. The researchers also found that Kyle never whistles, as other dolphins do.
Cosentino observed that the exchanges between Kylie and the porpoises had the rhythm of a “conversation” between members of the same species—turn-taking with little overlap—though naturally it’s unclear how much meaningful information is relayed in Kylie’s attempts at porpoise clicks.
“It might be me barking to my dog and him barking back,” Cosentino says.
Regardless, this behavior represents “an attempt” at communication that the “porpoises probably recognize,” says Herzing, research director of the Wild Dolphin Project who has studied the behavior of Atlantic spotted dolphins in the Bahamas for more than three decades. Herzing, who wasn’t involved in the study, commends the authors on the clever experimental design in a natural setting.
“The results are tantalizing,” she says. “What’s really telling is that Kylie doesn’t make any whistles, because dolphins always make whistles and porpoises never do.”
One of the greatest challenges of marine bioacoustics is identifying which creatures made what sound, says Laela Sayigh, an associate professor of animal behavior at Hampshire College. “They don’t make any external movement associated with sound, and most of the time you can’t see them anyways,” Sayigh says.
However, Kylie can be distinguished in this case—by her accent. “It still looks like she’s struggling” to get as high-pitched as the porpoises, Cosentino says—the peaks on her clicks aren’t as crisp as they should be, and there are some lower-frequency sounds mixed in with the high notes.
“If they were singers, Kylie would be Pavarotti and the porpoises would be Mariah Carey.”
Cetaceans in captivity are capable vocal mimics, Herzing notes, pointing to killer whales and belugas that mimicked bottlenose dolphin tankmates. And a 2016 bioacoustics study found that a cross-fostered Risso’s dolphin in an Italian marine park whistled more like the bottlenose dolphins it was raised with than wild members of its species.
However, that Kylie makes NBHF-like clicks while alone “draws into question” if she’s clicking to communicate with harbor porpoises or just mimicking the sound, Sayigh says.
Melon-headed conversation
Dolphins, porpoises, and whales are all cetaceans, descendants of land-dwelling mammals that made their way back to the water over millions of years. As they re-adapted to life in the ocean, “evolutionarily, the nostrils became the blowhole,” Cosentino says.
While toothed whales like dolphins and porpoises have only one open nostril, both nasal cavities are still present below the surface, each capped by a muscular structure called “monkey lips.” (Cetacean anatomy is often described in colorful terms, originating from descriptions by whalers). The monkey lips are somewhat analogous to our own vocal cords, controlling airflow—and when air is forced from the lungs through the “lips” on the left nasal cavity “it’s like letting the air out of a balloon,” creating warbling whistles, Cosentino says.
The right nasal cavity is responsible for the clicks used in both communication and navigation. It dead-ends next to a fatty deposit on the toothed whale’s forehead called a melon, which amplifies and focuses the cetacean’s vocalizations. Since both sets of monkey lips operate independently, some cetaceans, including bottlenose dolphins, can click and whistle at the same time—kind of like Mongolian throat-singing. (Learn more: The pioneering science that unlocked the secrets of whale culture.)
Kylie’s story is part of a broad field of research into how cetaceans interact with members of other species. “They’re very social, they’re very sexual, and they’re very communicative,” says Herzing. “These animals survive and adapt socially, and sound is a natural way they do it.”
Well-documented interspecies adoptions also demonstrate that species divisions may not be as clear-cut as once thought. Examples include a Canadian beluga pod that took in a narwhal calf and a spinner dolphin that lived among Tahiti bottlenose for 20 years.
Recent DNA analyses also demonstrate we’ve only scratched the surface of the extent of hybridization, Herzing emphasizes. Bottlenose dolphins have hybridized with at least 10 species in captivity and in the wild, including cetaceans as disparate as the pilot whale and the Guiana dolphin. Researchers hypothesize that cetaceans are able to hybridize so successfully because of their shared DNA—their species diverged only within the past 10 million years.
Besides attempts at communication, Kylie seems close to porpoises in other ways. On multiple occasions, Nairn has seen female porpoises bring their young calves to interact with Kylie. Since porpoise calves usually stick very close to mom until they’re weaned, Nairn was surprised to watch them swim with the dolphin in echelon, a position just behind her pectoral fin that researchers say is the cetacean equivalent to “carrying” a baby, Nairn explains.
Nairn has also observed male porpoises attempting to mount Kylie. But does she entertain their advances? “I would even say she courts, aye,” Nairn admits with a chuckle. Mating is theoretically anatomically possible, although there haven’t been any scientifically documented dolphin-porpoise hybrids, Herzing says.
Ever since a week of intense storms in February 2021 caused a massive drilling ship to become unmoored near her favorite buoy, Kylie has been missing. Nairn says it’s not out of character for her to relocate after a big disturbance to one of her “holiday buoys” elsewhere in the Clyde for months at a stretch, even up to a year, but he can’t help but worry.
Nairn and his colleagues say they’re eager to look—and listen—for Kylie as soon as the spring field season begins—and see what else she might teach us.
Watch your inbox over the next few days for photos, stories, and special offers from us.
Like humans, female dolphins have a functional clitoris, according to a study appearing today (January 10, 2022) in the journal Current Biology. The findings are based on the discovery that the clitoris-like structure positioned in the vaginal entrance of bottlenose dolphins has lots of sensory nerves and erectile bodies.
“The dolphin clitoris has many features to suggest that it functions to provide pleasure to females,” says first author Patricia Brennan, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.
Scientists have known that dolphins are highly social. They have sex throughout the year as a way of forging and maintaining social bonds. It had been noted also that dolphin females have a clitoris in the vagina in a spot that would make stimulation during copulation likely. There’ve also been reports of females rubbing each other’s clitorises with their snouts, flippers, and flukes.
This photograph depicts dolphin arousal. Credit: Dara Orbach
In the new study, Brennan and colleagues decided to take a closer look at the dolphin clitoris. They looked carefully at clitorises from 11 females that had died naturally. They examined them for the presence, shape, and configuration of erectile bodies. They also looked at how nerve fibers ran through the tissues. What they saw supports the notion of a working clitoris in dolphins.
“Just like the human clitoris, the dolphin clitoris has large areas of erectile tissue that fill up with blood,” Brennan says.
The erectile tissue shape changes as animals become adults, she added, suggesting that it acquires a functional role. The studies further show that the clitoris body has large nerves and many free nerve endings right underneath the skin, which is much thinner there than in the adjacent skin. They also found genital corpuscles much like those previously described in the human clitoris and penis tip, which are known to be involved in the pleasure response.
This image depicts the big nerves in the dolphin clitoris. Credit: Patricia Brennan
Overall, Brennan says that the erectile bodies in dolphins are “surprisingly similar” to the shape of the erectile bodies in humans.
“Since the entire pelvis of dolphins is so different to humans, it was surprising to see how similar the shapes were,” she says. “Also, the size of the nerves in the clitoris body was very surprising. Some were larger than half a millimeter in diameter.”
Brennan said they got curious about the dolphin clitoris while studying the evolution of vaginas in dolphins.
“Every time we dissected a vagina, we would see this very large clitoris, and we were curious whether anyone had examined it in detail to see if it worked like a human clitoris,” she says. “We knew that dolphins have sex not just to reproduce, but also to solidify social bonds, so it seemed likely that the clitoris could be functional.”
The researchers note that there’s been little study of the clitoris and female sexual pleasure in nature. In fact, even the human clitoris wasn’t fully described until the 1990s.
“This neglect in the study of female sexuality has left us with an incomplete picture of the true nature of sexual behaviors,” Brennan says. “Studying and understanding sexual behaviors in nature is a fundamental part of understanding the animal experience and may even have important medical applications in the future.”
Her team will continue to examine the clitoris and genitalia of dolphins and many other vertebrates to help fill in these gaps.
Reference: “Evidence of a functional clitoris in dolphins” by Patricia L.R. Brennan, Jonathan R. Cowart and Dara N. Orbach, 10 January 2022, Current Biology. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.11.020
The bottlenose dolphin (Tersiops truncatus) appears to have a very large and well-developed clitoris, potentially better placed for coital pleasure than the clitoris of humans, according to new research.
The visible tip of the human clitoris is but the size of a pea and located slightly north of the vagina and urethra (although much of the structure remains hidden in the pelvis or under a ‘hood’ of skin).
The head of the dolphin clitoris, on the other hand, is slightly larger and located right near the vagina entrance. What’s more, the whole organ has an ‘S’-shaped bend in it, which suggests it can stick out even further when erect.
During copulation, it would be almost impossible for a dolphin penis to avoid, experts say.
“The dolphin clitoris has many features to suggest that it functions to provide pleasure to females,” says biologist Patricia Brennan from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.
“We knew that dolphins have sex not just to reproduce, but also to solidify social bonds, so it seemed likely that the clitoris could be functional.”
Computer reconstruction of the dolphin clitoris. (Dara Orbach/Mount Holyoke College)
Today, we still know very little about the human clitoris and even less about its counterpart in other species. All female mammals are known to have a clitoris-like structure, but we still aren’t sure how these organs function or if they give animals pleasure.
Like humans, female dolphins are known to copulate all year round, but only sometimes are they ovulating. This suggests the species mates for more than just reproduction.
In the wild, for instance, bottlenose dolphins have been observed partaking in group orgies, where male and females alike use their snouts, flippers, and flukes to rub the protruding clitorises and penises of their peers.
Direct stimulation of the clitoris has also been observed in sexual interactions between only females.
Unfortunately, we can’t scan a dolphin’s brain during all this hanky panky to see if these creatures really are having fun, so researchers have turned to the clitoris itself for answers.
When scanning the sexual organs of 11 naturally deceased female dolphins, the team found an abundance of erectile tissue, blood vessels, and nerve endings in the clitoris.
Similar to the human clitoris, the glans of the dolphin clitoris is also enclosed in a hood. In dolphin adulthood, this hood becomes wrinkled, possibly allowing the tip of the organ, which includes erectile tissue, to swell with blood when aroused.
Arteries in the clitoris were also found to closely trace clitoral nerves, which is an indication of orgasm function in humans.
“Since the entire pelvis of dolphins is so different to humans, it was surprising to see how similar the shapes were,” says Brennan.
“Also, the size of the nerves in the clitoris body was very surprising. Some were larger than half a millimeter in diameter.”
Given that the penis and the clitoris develop from the same structures, the findings could help explain why dolphins of all sexes have been seen masturbating on the sandy floor. Some have even been caught using ‘sex toys’, in the form of dead fish or wriggling eels.
Dolphin sex is clearly a kinky affair, and it’s drawn the interest of researchers for years now. Still, most experts have been interested in the dolphin penis, investigating what it looks like, and examining how it fits with the dolphin vagina.
In comparison, the dolphin clitoris has been all but overlooked. And that’s the case for most female mammals.
“Very little is known about female reproductive morphology in most wild vertebrate species,” said researcher Dara Orbach, when announcing the preliminary results of her dolphin dissection in 2019.
“This research provides a comparative framework to explore other functions of sex that may not be unique to humans.”
If sexual pleasure really does hold evolutionary significance, female pleasure among mammals might tell us how. Ignoring this side of sex will give us only half the picture, and as we all know, it takes at least two to tango.
Humans and dolphins have even more in common than we might have thought, new research suggests. Biologists say they’ve found clear anatomical evidence that female dolphins have a fully functional clitoris that helps them experience pleasure during sex—just as it does for humans. The findings may one day help scientists trace back the evolutionary origins of the sexual organ and sex in general.
Lead author Patricia Brennan, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, and her team have been studying the evolution of genitals in all sorts of vertebrate animals. More recently, they turned their attention to dolphins, the marine mammals known for their playful and eerily human-like nature at times (in ways good and bad).
“Dolphins have vaginal folds, and we were studying these folds to try to figure out their function and why they are so diverse across species,” Brennan told Gizmodo in an email. “As we dissected all these vaginas, the clitoris was obviously very well developed, so we decided to investigate how much we knew about it.”
Brennan and her team were able to closely look at the clitoral tissue of 11 bottlenose dolphin females that had died of natural causes. Aside from studying the surface physical features of the clitoris, they also examined the presence of nerve endings, muscles, and blood vessels. Everything they found pointed to the same thing: a fully working funmaker.
For one, Brennan noted, the dolphin clitoris is relatively large and filled with plenty of erectile tissue and blood vessels that allow it to engorge quickly. Their clitoris also grows in size as a dolphin matures, much as it does with human puberty, and it’s surrounded by a band of connective tissue that helps it keep its shape, indicating that it’s a valuable body part. And perhaps most importantly, the dolphin clitoris is chock full of nerve endings right underneath relatively thin skin, along with other sensory receptors—both of which, Brennan says, “are likely involved in a pleasure response like they are in humans.”
It’s no secret that some species of dolphins seem to engage in sexual behaviors outside of the strict criteria and timing needed for reproduction (even with humans, according to some eyewitness accounts). It’s widely thought that these dolphins use sex as a social lubricant. During mating, they appear to engage in copious amounts of foreplay before the brief period of penetrative sex. Both male and female dolphins are thought to masturbate, and there have been reports of homosexual behaviors among both sexes, including female dolphins rubbing each others’ clitorises using their snouts or flippers. So it stands to reason that the clitoris would play a key role in all this fun-having. But the authors say theirs is the first anatomical research to clearly demonstrate this purpose.
Dolphins engaging in sexual behavior.Photo: Dara Orbach
“While it may seem obvious that animals that engage in as much sexual behavior as dolphins do should be deriving pleasure from this behavior, we can now use morphological features of the clitoris to show that they actually do,” said Brennan. Though Brennan and her team have previously discussed this research, their peer-reviewed study has now been published in Current Biology.
Dolphins aren’t the only animal besides humans that appear to enjoy sex and to do it for non-reproductive reasons; many of our primate relatives seem to as well. But the fact that the dolphin clitoris is so similar to the human version, despite dolphins and humans probably being 95 million years apart in the evolutionary family tree, could suggest that the organ’s origins go way, way back. And given the risks that can come with sex, it makes sense that pleasure would evolve as a motivating factor.
Large nerves in a dolphin clitorisImage: Patricia Brennan
Studying the sex lives of animals is no easy task. But Brennan and her colleagues point out that the nature of female sexuality and the clitoris has long been understudied in animals and in humans. Among other things, this lack of knowledge hampers our knowledge of how sex came to be in the first place.
“Sex is central to evolutionary processes, and our ignorance of female sexuality results in an incomplete understanding of how sex actually works in nature.” Brennan said. “You need two to tango, as the saying goes!”
Brennan’s team plans to keep studying the evolution of genitals in various animals. That list of projects will continue to include dolphins, but also snakes, alpacas, and even alligators.
Florida’s most famous dolphin, Winter, beloved by fans around the world and star of the movie Dolphin Tale, died of twisted intestines, according to necropsy results released by an aquarium on Saturday.
The dolphin’s intestines were in an area impossible to reach through surgery.
“There was nothing more the team could have done to save her life,” a statement from Clearwater Marine Aquarium said, adding that the condition is found in stranded wild dolphins “as well as any living being with intestines”.
Winter, who died on Thursday, inspired fans young and old after her tail was amputated when it became entangled in a crab trap rope, cutting off circulation.
A prosthetic tail and a miraculous recovery offered hope to many with illnesses and disabilities.
Winter swims at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. Photograph: Damaske, Jim/AP
“Because of Winter’s injury and the distortion it caused in her body, she was more prone to facing health complications since her rescue 16 years ago,” the aquarium said.
Staff said they had worked around the clock in recent days to try to save 16-year-old Winter and minimize her pain. The facility was closed on Friday, in part to mourn the loss of its most famous resident, but it reopened on Saturday.
Fans, including autistic children and soldiers with missing limbs, made pilgrimages to visit Winter, star of the 2011 film Dolphin Tale, which chronicled her recovery.
Shortly after the dolphin arrived following her 2005 rescue, the aquarium partnered with Hanger Clinic, the nation’s largest provider of prosthetic limbs, to create her tail.
While Winter might have survived without one, using her side flippers to swim, that would have led to skeletal misalignment and other health issues.
Attaching the tail without damaging Winter’s skin was problematic because dolphin skin is so thin it can be cut with a fingernail. Eventually, engineers created a soft silicone-like sleeve, now marketed as WintersGel, over which the prosthetic tail slid snugly.
Such sleeves are now used for human prosthetics, to eliminate skin sores.
