Ever since Flipper appeared on our screens we’ve known dolphins to be highly intelligent, social creatures with an advanced communication system and the tendency to help humans when in trouble. Many of us have seen them performing tricks in captivity or watched them on television displaying the same manoeuvres in the wild. Some of us (including myself) have even been lucky enough to swim with one. But how many of us are aware of their slightly less courteous behaviour?

Image via Wikipedia

Dolphins have a dark side, too…

Researchers have been studying the sexual behaviour of dolphins intensely for the last decade, after it was discovered they not only partake in homosexual activity (read more HERE), but also gang-rape and kidnap females who don’t reciprocate their sexual advances.

Image via Wikipedia

In order to coerce the reluctant females, males form groups of two or three – often remaining together in their search for sexual gratification for well over a decade. When they find a suitable female they literally force her to mate with one or more of the group, and have even been known to herd their unwilling consorts for months at a time, basically using them as their personal sex-slaves.

Although dolphins are not alone in the animal world of gang-rapists, research suggests they’ve the perfected the art to a degree unseen in any other species, and it seems they don’t limit their advances to their female partners, either: there are several reports claiming divers and swimmers have also been accosted.

Studies would suggest the behaviour is likely to be undertaken for reasons of pleasure as much as reproduction, as dolphins are known to enjoy sexual activity in cases when reproduction would be physically impossible.