So there's this documentary airing soon about a woman (Margaret) who was involved in a 1960s experiment on dolphin intelligence. Basically she lived with this dolphin, Peter, and was for a long time his only constant contact with anyone (even when other dolphins were introduced, she was his main source of socialization). Peter began making sexual advances towards Margaret--and the documentary is treating this like some big strange thing but actually it's not that unusual. What is unusual is that Margaret would manually masturbate the dolphin. On the regular. She apparently taught him several words and he was extremely emotional attached to her; no wonder, it was almost like a pod dolphin-dolphin relationship. (Margaret describes the masturbation as "scratching an itch" for Peter. Not so. Dolphins are one of the only species that have sex for pleasure and emotional connection.) So when the experiment ends and Peter is sent to another location without Margaret, he commits suicide.
And this doc and everyone else is like "the remarkable story of a dolphin who fell in love with a human" and I'm wondering when the we're going to start treating this--along with with the masturbation of animals like Tilikum, the orca who is the focus of Blackfish; since that's all Tilikum is these days, a sperm machine for artificial insemination--as what it is. Namely, the sexual abuse of a creature with the ability to experience emotion as we do, while lacking the ability to convey consent in the way we understand it. How is this any different from other criminal cases of bestiality? Of the sexual abuse of someone too young or mentally impaired to properly consent, but emotionally intelligent enough to be emotionally hurt? (And the sexual stuff aside, Peter was obviously, like many cetaceans today, emotionally and physically isolated to the point of being so reliant on Margare that he couldn't survive without her.)