Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - She Actually Hooked Up With a Dolphin // The Margaret Howe Lovatt Story

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

In the 1960s, naturalist Margaret Howe Lovatt took part in a NASA-funded experiment on the island of St. Thomas aimed at teaching a bottlenose dolphin named Peter to understand and speak English. To facilitate constant interaction, Lovatt lived in a partially flooded house called the Dolphin House, where she spent nearly every waking moment with Peter. The study gained notoriety not just for its ambitious goals, but for the controversial turn it took when Lovatt began a physical relationship with the dolphin.

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. So what happens when you give dolphins a bunch of hallucinogenic drugs? Well, let's find out. Well, this story starts with this guy, John Lilly. And John Lilly is about 49 living in Maryland. And John Lilly is a neuroscientist in the 60s. And the dude is a really smart guy.

But he has this obsession. He's convinced that dolphins have the mental capacity to talk. And he's determined to teach them. to speak English. So in 1963, he gets to work on this. He somehow convinces NASA to fund his research, and so using this funding from the government, John Lilly opens a dolphin research lab on the island of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands right on the coast. He calls it the Dolphinarium. And inside this lab, he's got three dolphins that he's working with. And he's trying everything he can to get them to talk like a human. He's analyzing their speech patterns, and he's analyzing their speech

patterns. He's making sounds at the dolphins, and the dolphins will, like, mimic these sounds back through their blowholes. And as interesting as that is, John Lilly isn't really making the progress that he wishes he was making. And that is when he gets an insane idea. See, John Lilly, he's kind of a hippie, and he's been known to experiment with LSD. Sometimes for science, sometimes, you know, just for fun, but whatever, it's the 60s, and LSD is still legal for. for scientific research during this time. So John Lilly starts thinking, why don't I just give some of this acid to the dolphins?

Maybe it'll help them talk more. Because, you know, LSD has been known to make some people chatty when they take it. So he starts injecting doses of acid into two of the female dolphins he has regularly. And then he, like, monitors their behavior. And I'm sure these dolphins are over here like tripping balls and whatnot. You know, having a great time. But here's the thing, though. Pretty quickly, the dolphins actually do start communicating more.

In fact, they become 70% more vocal. They're like super talkative when they're tripping. They're like making noises out of their blowholes and whatnot for hours. But what the LSD doesn't do is it doesn't help them speak English better. All the squeaks and noises the dolphins are making, they're all still nonsense to us. But then, this story gets way crazier than this. So it's now 1964, and John Lilly is still running the Dolphinarium. He's still trying to get these dolphins to talk by giving them hallucinogenics and stuff.

And that is when this woman enters the story. Margaret. Margaret's 23, and she lives on St. Thomas, so she's just kind of a local hippie herself. And one day, Margaret hears that this neuroscientist has this lab on the island, where he's trying to communicate with dolphins. And Margaret's like, well, I want to be involved in this, in that, even though she has zero scientific training and no credentials in doing animal research. But whatever, she still wants to be involved. So she drives up to the lab, and she kind of just shows up unannounced. And she talks to the lab director, not John Lilly, other researchers work at the Dolphinarium too. So she asks this lab director, hey, can I check out the dolphins?

And the lab director's like, all right, and he lets her in. So from here, Margaret starts hanging around the Dolphinarium more and more, and she starts volunteering and helping out. And of course, she eventually meets John Lilly. And right away, she's on board with everything he's trying to do. All his research, trying to get the dolphins to talk, and all that sounds great to her. And over time, as she's helping John Lilly with all his dolphin research, at some point, she grows pretty close to this dolphin, Peter. Remember how John Lilly was giving LSD to two of the female dolphins?

Well, Peter is the only male dolphin, and the only dolphin John Lilly isn't giving LSD to. So Margaret pitches John Lilly this idea. She's like, what if I just live at the lab full time with Peter? That way, John Lully can focus on giving LSD to the other female dolphins, while she spends all her time working directly with Peter, trying to get him to speak English. And John loves this idea. He's all in. So in 1965, they get to work, and they convert a huge chunk of this lab into a place where both a human and a dolphin could live. So it's like this big tank with 18 inches of water in it.

And you can see this picture here, Margaret is working at a desk while Peter swims beneath her. So from here, Margaret and Peter are together basically 24-7, like she eats at the lab, she sleeps there, she works, there all while ankle deep in salt water right next to Peter. And every day, she's running these speech lessons with him. She's trying to get him to mimic human sounds, and she's repeating the same words over and over to him, like, hello and hello Margaret. And the crazy thing is, Peter actually starts making some progress.

He starts making sounds that are kind of close. Like, he's kind of starting to do it. And of course, she's documenting all of this, according her progress for NASA. And over time, Peter grows very fond of Margaret. Like, he loves being around her. He's always following her and nudging her because, you know, he wants her attention. You know how pets can be. But here's where things get really weird. So Peter is a young, adolescent male dolphin. So he's basically going through puberty. And the boy has, you know, urges. And because he's isolated from the other dolphins and living in such close proximity with Margaret,

he starts turning those urges toward her. He thinks she's kind of fine. And he's like always trying to rub up against her and whatnot. So every time Peter gets horny, Margaret has to stop all the language lessons she's giving him and transfer him to the outside tanks where the other two female dolphins are. That way Peter can interact, you know, with the girls and take care of business, I guess. The problem Margaret has with all this is that this occurs frequently. Peter is always having these romantic urges, so every speech lesson she gives him is interrupted, and she has to, like, transfer him from tank to tank, and it's this whole tedious process. So Margaret eventually makes a decision.

She decides that instead of stopping everything and moving, Peter every single time, she's just gonna help him take care of his urges. You know, by hand. And by the way, this isn't some big rumor. She actually documents all of this and she writes it into her research notes. Like she officially reports it as part of the experiment. And there are other researchers working at the lab who notice all this going on too. And so this is Hanky-panky goes on the whole time she's there with him. But then, in 1966, it all comes crashing down. Because it becomes apparent that John Lilly is never going to get these dolphins to speak English, no matter how much LSD he gives them. And ultimately, his experiment is deemed a failure,

and he officially loses all his funding, and the lab is forced to shut down. So after all that, Lee leaves St. Thomas and he moves the three dolphins to his other facility in Miami, Florida, and Margaret, she doesn't go with them. She stays in St. Thomas where she's always lived. Now, at this new lab, poor Peter, he's confined to this concrete tank in the basement of this building. And there's no sunlight, and it's small, and it's cramped, and he's alone there all the time because he has to be separate from the female dolphins. And he no longer has his teacher and best friend, Margaret, who he was likely in love with. And pretty quickly, poor Peter, he gets depressed.

And dolphins do have the mental capacity to get depressed. And eventually, he gets so sad that he swims to the bottom of the pool and he holds his breath and he unalives himself.