If you thought the story about http://www.viddler.com/v/86e2e579the woman who regularly jerked off her dolphin friend/test subject Peter was twisted, get a load of what else happened to the dolphins in that experiment. As detailed in BBC Four's The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins, which aired tonight in the U.K., John C. Lilly was a scientist who started studying three dolphins in a partially flooded villa on St. Thomas dubbed "the dolphin house." A lot of these experiments revolved around dolphin communication—specifically, Margaret Howe Lovatt (the titular girl who talked to dolphins...sometimes with her hand) attempted to teach English to her beloved Peter.

As the experiment went on, Lilly decided to dose the two dolphins who weren't Peter with LSD, and then when that proved ineffective, he used a jackhammer near where they were swimming to get some sort of a response. That didn't do anything either except show to the world that LSD is a hell of a drug in the hands of a mad scientist.

At least, that's how it was told in The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins. Lilly reportedly claimed that "they had 'wonderful trips' and displayed behavior—coming closer to him, taking odd floating positions—that they previously had not."

Below is some footage of Peter "learning" English. Really, he just mimicked Lovatt, although she still believes that if she had more time with him, she could have taught him how to speak.

Despite the bestial nature of Lovatt and Peter's relationship, the documentary was oddly moving. Peter clearly meant a lot to Lovatt and her life. After the funding for the experiment ran out in 1966, Peter was moved to a much smaller facility in Miami, where he effectively committed suicide. The dolphin expert/activist Ric O'Barry, whom you may remember from http://www.viddler.com/v/9646e064The Cove, said Peter's death was "self-induced asphyxiation." Dolphins are not automatic breathers like humans, and must consciously take each breath. The documentary theorized that the trauma of losing the love of his life and moving to a smaller facility was too much for Peter to bear. He just stopped breathing.

At the end of the doc, there was a scene of Lovatt listening to the recordings of her English lessons with Peter for the first time in over 50 years. "I'm a human, I'm in love with a human, I married a human, I had babies," she reflected. "I did have a very close encounter with...I can't even say a dolphin, again, with Peter. One dolphin. I was very lucky."