Dolphin Rape Cave – More Than A Myth?

To some of you, this story will come as quite a shock, and rather horrifying, while others might think this is just another bunch of internet hoopla.

Some of you may have even already heard this, and are yawning, saying, “Oh, here we go with that old dolphin rape cave story again…”

In any case, there’s a rumor that’s been floating around the internet for some time about dolphins over the past few years, and it’s not a very “fun fact”.

Have you heard about the dreaded “dolphin rape cave”?

No? Consider yourself lucky you’ve managed to avoid hearing about it for this long. But, since you’re here, the story goes something like this…

Scott Randleston of the Dolphin Research Institute of Boca Raton, Florida, has been studying dolphin behavior for 17 years, and came up with something called the “decoy program”.

Mr. Randleston apparently made the following statement:

“In every case, the decoy was set upon in a short time, by groups of dolphins ranging from 8 to 20 young males. It seems there are gangs of dolphin predators roaming the open waters, looking for humans to sexually assault.

The dolphins, in each case, were observed circling the swimmer as one of the group grabbed the decoy with their penis, and dragged it under. The others followed.”

“You see, dolphins have a prehensile penis, made up of powerful muscles, and they can wrap it around objects, such as a human wrist, ankle, neck, or waist. One could compare it to a boa constrictor or an elephant trunk. The decoys never resurfaced in any of the studies. We tracked one of the decoys to an underwater cave, where it had been repeatedly raped and torn apart by the dolphins.”

With this rather preposterous quote circulating the Net very quickly back in ’05, the much-reported “Dolphin Rape Cave” myth was born. Is it really just a myth?

You may think this is funny, or stupid, and immediately want to dismiss this as a bunch of crap, but hold on a second, because there’s a few things that might make you pause to wonder if this is actually true.

The first piece of evidence is Exhibit A – the rarely seen dolphin penis…or phallus, or schlong.

Now we say a dolphin’s penis is rarely seen, but that’s mainly because people that see dolphins, aren’t generally trying to see its penis. However, if you work at a place like Sea World, maybe you see things like this ever day.

Aside from those of us who are specifically interested in the mating habits of sea creatures (a small percentage of the population, to be sure), there isn’t much incentive to examine a dolphin’s penis. Well, that is, until you hear a rumor that a dolphin’s penis can drag you to your death. 🙁

Peaceful or Forceful?

You might think to yourself, “I thought dolphins were peaceful creatures, not sexually depraved rapists of the sea.” Well, if you thought that, maybe it’s time to take another look at what dolphins are all about.

Here is a video that shows “mounting” evidence that dolphins may not, in fact, help you find your way back to shore if your boat capsized in the sea.

Just look at this footage and maybe you will think twice about getting near a dolphin at your local Sea World.

Perhaps you weren’t paying close attention, but ask yourself this – did you see any aroused dolphin genitalia in this video?

Now, let’s return to Dr. Randleston’s dolphins.

If these dolphins were sexually aroused – not to mention aggressive, as Mr. Randleston noted in his decoy experiment – would there not have been some attempt made by these dolphins to drag some of these people under the waves and back to their so-called “dolphin rape cave”?

Maybe these dolphins were just playing around. Maybe they weren’t even male dolphins. Do female dolphins like to jump out of the water and hump people too? So many questions, so few answers… You’d have to know a thing or two about dolphins, in order to say for sure what these dolphins were doing, although this type of behaviour does look mighty suspicious.

If you do want to learn more about dolphins, you can always visit the Dolphin Research Center (dolphins.org). They would most certainly be able to provide you with more information than we can provide you with here.

Dolphins – What They Don’t Tell You

There are still a few things about dolphin behaviour that you might be interested to know, before you go deep sea diving with a pack of horny male dolphins.

Male dolphins are known to gang rape other dolphins, male and female, and they are not extremely picky about what species they mate with.

There is a news story every year or so about dolphins trying to rape swimmers. Whether these claims are true or not, it’s hard to say.

No police reports have been filed that we know about, but, at the very least, there is definitely something “up” with dolphin behavior that many people are not aware of.

Here is another video showing some of the more aggressive behaviors of bottle-nosed dolphins.

As you can see, the males can be very bullying to smaller dolphins, as well as females.

As a sidenote, the dolphins in this video appear to have larger genitals. But that’s not even the worst of it!

Beware Of Prehensile Phallus

There is one detail that sends shivers down our spine, but also makes the whole “dolphin rape cave” story seem a little more plausible, and that has to do with the dolphin’s supposed prehensile phallus.

Ok, what is that? Seriously, what does that even mean? Well, the word “prehensile” generally means like, grabby, and it is applied to things like the tails of certain animals, like monkeys, who can grasp or hold things with their tails.

A prehensile phallus just means that we’re talking about a phallus, instead of a tail. In other words, it’s a penis which has the ability to hold, grasp, or feel things. And this is where it gets creepy (or creepier).

How can it get any creepier? Well, if a dolphin has a prehensile phallus, that just means that the “dolphin rape cave” story just became a little more believable. Why? A dolphin literally could grab you with its phallus, and drag you down into the depths. Chances are, if this happened, you would not live to tell the tale, either. Who would ever believe it?!

Here are some ominous pro-dolphin-rape-cave quotes floating around out there, which relate back to dolphins and their underwater raping ways. We do not claim these statements as being completely true, but they are out there, and someone did say these things (but it wasn’t us).

“The woman taken by the dolphin was 37 year old pilates instructor and professional dancer,  of Liverpool, NY . Authorities are still looking for Halerfan. Bob Grunderson of the National Coast Guard made a statement to the press stating, “Our search for Miss Halerfan, or her remains, will continue though we hold no hope of finding either.”

“In past experience, with cases of dolphin kidnapping and sexual assault, the victims are usually never found. Authorities will continue the search for Halerfan until Wednesday, stating, “We believe this to be a reasonable time frame, if she were not killed in the attack, it still means she will have been in open water without any sort of flotation device for more than 6 days. The likelihood of survival at that point is not possible.” – Source Withheld

Here’s another dubious claim…

“There are at least 14 cases of dolphin rape reported each year in the United States, these usually occur near the shore where victims are able to escape before they can be dragged into a dolphin rape cave. There is no real estimate of how many deaths are the result of dolphin rape each year, as many of these occur in open water where there are few eyewitnesses if any.” – Andy Petersberg

And finally… the real kicker.

“Around 14 people get raped by dolphins each year.” – Hans Strybeck

Playing Dolphin’s…err.. Devil’s Advocate

Up until now, you may have thought that even we were convinced of the dolphin rape cave story. What? Not even for a second were we going to take this strange tale of dolphins raping everyone they can, seriously.

After examining all of the evidence, here’s what we came up with as sort of a final weighing of the evidence presented to us from around the web. We are not Snopes, but we’ll try our best.

First of all, if you Google “Dolphin Research Institute of Boca Raton”, there doesn’t appear to be a dolphin research center in Boca Raton.

If there ever was one such place, we don’t know. There is a dolphin research center currently located in Grassy Key, FL. That is at least near Boca Raton. Is Boca Raton a good place to have a dolphin research center? Sure, because dolphins live in the coastal waters in and around Florida.

Next, if you Google “Scott Randleston”, this person doesn’t seem to exist. If he were a marine biologist studying dolphin behaviour for 17 years, you’d think he would be documented somewhere on the internet. But no. That said, at least Randleston is a real last name, so he could exist, possibly. Scott, are you out there?

The next bit of evidence which seems to debunk the dolphin rape cave story. While they may have a phallus that looks like it is somewhat large and prehensile, there is no hard evidence that it actually IS prehensile that we could find anywhere.

Even if it were actually prehensile, it doesn’t look large enough to wrap around someone’s waist like a python, and drag them underwater.

In fact, dolphins may weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 pounds, but that doesn’t mean that their phallus is substantial, or flexible enough to wrap itself around a human and drag them possibly miles to their nearest “rape cave”. Also, for the record, we couldn’t find any evidence of any creature that possessed such a phallus.

In conclusion, we are relieved to admit that this whole “dolphin rape cave” thing doesn’t really make much sense, when you think about it.

Some of you out there reading this, probably knew all along that it was ridiculous.

Still, there is enough evidence floating around, that dolphins are at least somewhat naughty when it comes to their interactions with humans.

We probably won’t be going swimming with any dolphins for awhile.