Tale of Two Dolphins - Tapa dura

No other creature but the dolphin has a brain as large and complex as that of the human being. Horace Dobbs has spent the last ten years studying the extraordinary behavior of dolphins and has come to believe that the only way in which to understand what goes on in the minds of our cousins in the sea is by meeting them in their own environment and forming close relationships with them. If we can do that then it should be possible, with the two intelligences working closely together, to open up the world hidden from us beneath the sea, yet known intimately by the dolphin. In 1983, Dr Dobbs set out to make contact with a friendly Bottlenose dolphin known to be living in a remote location off the coast of Brittany. When eventually it was tracked down, a remarkable relationship was struck up between man and animal, when went by the name of Jean Louis. Dr Dobbs even made a film for television about the many exciting and enlightening encounters he had had with the dolphin. These included a real-life drama in which the ancient myth that a dolphin will go to the rescue of a drowning person was put to a tragic test. At the same time as he was in contact with Jean Louis, Dr Dobbs also had the good fortune to come across a second friendly wild dolphin off the coast of Cornwall. This one he called Percy, as he was the subject of another television film shown recently. Percy had a personality totally different to that of Jean Louis, and the author recounts a remarkable chain of events which led him into a closer and closer friendship with the dolphin. The breakthrough in his understanding of dolphin psyche came, however, not as the result of painstaking scientific experiments, but through Percy's extraordinary and gentle response to a woman who could not swim, who was terrified of the sea, yet who plucked up courage to go into the water with him. What took place then and subsequently caused Dr Dobbs to examine the validity of his entire scientific training and to conclude that it had blinkered his vision, and prevented him from admitting what he had clearly observed in dolphin behavior over many years.

Dr Horace Dobbs gained hid PhD at London University and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. After giving up atomic research in favour of human and veterinary medicine he decided to devote himself to the study of wild dolphins. When he is not at sea diving with dolphins he spends his time writing, lecturing, broadcasting and making films for television. Three of his dolphin films have appeared on television since Christmas 1985: 'A Close Encounter' (about the dolphin Jean Louis) on Channel 4, 'The Eye of a Dolphin' (about the dolphin Percy) on BBC2, and most recently 'Bewitched by a Dolphin' on the ITV network. He was a founder of the Oxford Underwater Research Group and is now Director of International Dolphin Watch - an organization for the study and conservation of dolphins. His book, Follow a Wild Dolphin, became a bestseller.