Reggie the bottlenose dolphin has had a rollercoaster ride of it lately.
He first came to fame for dancing on his tail, offering up his soft white belly for a rub, performing mini back flips and generally having fun with Lynda MacDonald and her family during their early morning swim in Lyme Bay, Dorset.
When Lynda, 50, posted a video of their ‘magical moment’ in the water on August 3, it went viral.
Tourists from all over raced to Lyme Bay and into the sea, hoping for their own special connection with Reggie, ‘the UK’s friendliest dolphin’.
Some parents even took their children out on paddle boards and deposited them in the water to wait for playtime with Reggie, who could weigh as much as 400lb (180kg) and be 12ft long.
The internet lit up with photos of his happy ‘smiling’ face and sleek body leaping through the water.
But now, nearly three weeks later, we’re told Reggie is sporting nasty gashes down his flank, probably from a boat propeller. Plus that he’s become a marauding attacker. That he’s potentially dangerous. And, whisper it, perhaps an aqua sex pest, too.
Because Reggie is not dancing delicately on his tail any more. No. Now he’s leaping on swimmers – particularly, it seems, women in wetsuits. Throwing himself on top of them. Pinning them down. And oh, dear me, some say, even rubbing himself against them in an alarmingly sensuous way.
Twice now, women have had to be rescued from his attention by kayaking brothers Rhys and Gareth Paterson.
On August 14, they spotted Reggie about 200 yards from the shore, jumping on a swimmer’s back.
‘We thought he was doing what he normally does – just a bit of fun,’ says Rhys.
But after hearing screams, they paddled over to find the dolphin repeatedly pushing the woman’s head underwater.
‘She was kind of gasping for air. She was terrified,’ Rhys says.
After bringing that swimmer back to shore, they saw Reggie turn his attention to another woman hanging on to a yellow buoy and ‘looking panicked’ as he rubbed himself against her, so they raced back to get her.
‘It kept jumping on them,’ describes Rhys.
‘The dolphin was basically drowning this woman – it kind of jumped on her back four times.’
Thankfully, neither of the women were injured but they were extremely shocked.
So what on earth is going on? How could Reggie look so happy and smiley and share such a magical moment with the MacDonald family and then behave so badly?
And, dare we ask, can all those dark rumours about frisky dolphins be true – do some of them really find humans sexually attractive?
Well, first things first. Let’s remember that Reggie is a wild animal, not a plaything or a tourist attraction. A supremely intelligent mammal with a sophisticated communication system and complex, fluid, social structure within his pod.
So the minute he started displaying unusual behaviour by interacting with humans and even playing, which is often a sign of acute stress, he should have been left well alone.
Which is why, for weeks now, increasingly exasperated dolphin experts have been offering the same advice: give him space, leave him alone, and don’t go in the water with him.
Instead of heeding this guidance, dolphin enthusiasts have flocked from all over in clear breach of the Wildlife And Countryside Act 1981, which specifies that approaching or recklessly disturbing a dolphin can result in up to six months in prison and an unlimited fine.
At one stage, horrified locals reported more than 20 laden paddle boards bobbing around Reggie, taking photos of his apparently smiling face. Which according to Calum Duncan, head of policy and advocacy at the Marine Conservation Society, is part of the problem.
‘People think [dolphins] want to play and make friends and special connections, but they are not smiling – it is just the way their mouth are formed and not a sign of what they’re thinking,’ he says.
‘They are huge predators with a lot of sharp teeth and can be incredibly aggressive to other species, particularly when anxious.’
And poor Reggie is clearly very anxious right now – and out of his comfort zone.
He’s been adrift and alone since February, when he first popped up in the area. And he is still there, wallowing in the warm shallows in the peak of the
school summer holidays rather than his natural habitat much further out to sea with the rest of Britain’s 700-strong bottlenose dolphin population.
He might have been separated from his pod by storms. Or he could be injured, ill, or just hungry. No one knows. But what is clear is that his behaviour is changing.
Or, as Danny Groves from the charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation explains: ‘It is called habituation – the dolphin changing their behaviour to fit a human presence.
‘He is being habituated by people who insist on interacting with him, a process that happens through a number of stages and levels.’
And the biggest worry is that Reggie will start to think of humans as part of his social network. Not his enemy. Which puts him in grave danger.
‘Most dolphins that interact with humans do not live very long afterwards,’ says Calum Duncan. Dolphins have always felt a bit special and are indeed much more like humans than we’d imagine. They have different personalities – bold, shy, feisty – and numerous partners, best friends, family members and acquaintances.
They also look after each other and, like us, experience a form of grief. If a mother loses a calf, she’ll often stay with the dead body – with no food – for days or even weeks.
So perhaps it’s no wonder we’re ridiculously excited to see them when they venture close to shore.
But the question remains: are they really sexually attracted to women in wetsuits, or has it all just been a terrible misunderstanding?
It is a delicate query and Danny Groves will not be drawn.
‘I think there would have to be far more expert analysis of footage before making that kind of conclusion,’ he says.
But Dr Bruno Diaz Lopez, the director of the Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute, is firm.
‘Dolphins would never ever confuse a woman in a wetsuit with a dolphin,’ he says, and goes on to explain that dolphins are ‘very active sexually’ and, like humans and unlike most other animals, have sex for enjoyment, fun and social interaction. Not just for the purpose of reproduction.
‘So it is very common to see a dolphin with an erection,’ he continues. ‘Because they use the penis to touch each other, to socialise.
‘It’s a bit like when a dog interacts around the leg of a person.
‘Hormones are driving them. They don’t actually want to have sex with you, they want to make you part of their social structure – to hang on to you.’
Which is of course good to hear but, given the penis of a bottlenose dolphin can be a foot long and is prehensile – which means it can wrap around objects such as a wrist or an ankle – it is still rather alarming.
Of course, Reggie isn’t the only dolphin to have become ‘entangled’ with humans – for fun and frolics and possibly a little bit more.
History shows they have form when it comes to friskiness – and it rarely ends well.
Back in August 2018, a single male called Zafar started popping up in the waves at Landevennec, Brittany.
At first – just like with Reggie at Lyme Bay – everyone was thrilled and he became a regular fixture, leaping and frolicking in the water with bathers who’d rushed into the sea to join him.
But the more he interacted with humans, the more boisterous and sexually aroused Zafar became. While he mostly contented himself with rubbing up against bathers, he lifted one woman swimmer clean out of the water with his snout and blocked others from reaching the shore.
Eventually, things got so bad that the town’s mayor banned all swimming while zesty Zafar remained in the water.
But he soon disappeared, and was presumed dead.
The aptly-named Randy was another lone male dolphin to become obsessed with both boats and bathers, this time in Weymouth, Dorset, in the summer of 2002.
Again, it started as a bit of fun and his antics quickly gained him worldwide celebrity status.
But, yet again like Reggie, his particular enthusiasm was women in rubber wetsuits and soon his ministrations got out of hand. Some women said they felt like they’d been sexually assaulted underwater – prompting safety fears and swimming bans.
But occasionally humans have been knowingly involved.
Back in the 1960s, Margaret Howe Lovatt, a 23-year-old naturalist, adopted a rather intimate approach with a dolphin called Peter when studying communication between humans and dolphins as part of a Nasa-funded research project in the British Virgin Islands.
‘He would rub himself on my knee, my foot or my hand and I allowed that,’ she said in a 2014 documentary.
‘I wasn’t uncomfortable, so long as it wasn’t too rough.’
Her rationale was that it was easier to just let it happen and get on with the research. But after a while she discovered the best way to get him to focus was to relieve his desires herself – manually!
And, of course, there was the infamous tale involving a man called Malcolm Brenner, who claimed to have had a year-long love affair with a dolphin called Dolly in the 1970s at a theme park in Sarasota, Florida, which he fictionalised in his book, Wet Goddess.
Apparently, they both fell into deep depression when Dolly was moved to another centre and she died soon after.
We can only hope and pray that it was all made up. If nothing else, it highlights our obsession with these extraordinary animals.
But the town of Amble in Northumberland must surely be the home of Britain’s most bizarre sexy dolphin story.
It involves ‘Freddy The Friendliest Dolphin’, who turned up in the late 1970s.
For a while, he became the biggest tourist attraction in the North East, briefly transforming the fortunes of Amble as people flocked from all over the world – Sweden, America, , Hawaii – to swim with Freddy and ‘feel his touch’.
The shops sold ‘I love Freddy’ T-shirts and ‘Friendly Freddy’ hats and mugs.
But sadly, the relationship all went sour when Alan Cooper, an animal rights campaigner, who had spent hundreds of hours swimming with Freddy in the North Sea, was accused of sexually abusing him and the whole sorry tale ended up in court.
Thankfully, after a crown court trial, Mr Cooper was acquitted.
Apparently, Freddy just liked hooking Mr Cooper’s arm with his penis as they swam together. But the court proceedings rather took the sheen off things.
Worse was to come for poor Freddy when a member of the Royal Family visited the local lifeboat station.
A lady-in-waiting asked to see him and, when she was taken out in a police boat, Freddy collided with its twin propellers. The blades cut gashes six inches deep into his right flank and he was lucky to survive.
As well as losing their fear of humans, over-familiar dolphins often become complacent around boats and, like Reggie and Freddy, expose themselves to dangerous propellers.
Meanwhile, back in Lyme Bay, it is only a couple of weeks since Reggie’s joyful early morning swim with Lynda MacDonald and her family – but it seems much, much longer.
Would she have been better advised not to share the video and just keep the wonderful memories for herself?
Because the poor confused dolphin doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going.
Perhaps the only thing that can save him now is for everyone – particularly women in wetsuits – to keep well out of his way and remove temptation in the hope that, eventually, he’ll get bored with the joys of neoprene and swim back out to sea.